Welcome back to their episode of the Startup Therapy Podcast.
This is Ryan Rutan, joined as always by my
friend, the founder, and CEO of startups.com.
Will, Schroeder will, we've had very, very interesting
relationships with our startups, with our work over the years.
It's necessarily what I would call healthy.
We poured a lot of time and love into them, and.
Sometimes they've given back to us, but I don't think we've
ever really truly demanded much back from our startups.
But that's not necessarily true for everybody else.
Right?
And so I think we gotta talk about like the difference
between being a founder and and how to balance
some of that stuff out and kind of what it looks like
for the rest of the world.
For example, you ever called a friend at two
o'clock in the afternoon, like Tuesday to find them
floating in a pool and just.
Found yourself incredulous.
I remember I told you this story after it happened.
This was like a year ago and I'm driving home.
Actually it's funny, I was driving home after teaching
the entrepreneurship class at my, my kid's school and I was
calling a friend of mine 'cause he was kinda like on route
to where I was headed next.
And I was two o'clock on Tuesday, a beautiful
like summer, afternoon or spring afternoon and
I'm like, uh, hey man.
What you up to?
He's a senior executive at a public, uh, technology company.
Right.
And he's a sales executive.
Right.
His whole life he has been on the ground selling.
Right.
Like, he understands performance metrics better than anybody.
Well, except when he is in the water, uh, not selling well.
Okay.
So, so he's also one of my oldest friends.
And, and so I was like, Hey man, what are you doing?
And he said, uh, I'm in the pool.
I'm like.
Huh?
Uh.
Like, what do you mean?
He, he is like, yeah, I'm sitting in a floaty,
floating in my pool.
I'm like, and this is, this is what's so funny, Ryan.
I was like, how?
I was incredulous.
Yeah.
Like how could you Possibly at two o'clock on a Tuesday, right?
When there's work to be done.
Yeah, there's work to be done.
Why depend on you,
sir.
And so my first thought was to fire him.
My second thought was that it doesn't work for me.
It doesn't work for me.
Yeah, I can't, I just go throw him a cinder block in the pool.
But here's the best part.
Here's the best part, like, and again, I've got a great
relationship with, I've known him for a long time.
My response was kind of like, I. How, like, how
could you possibly do that?
And, and this is all he said, he goes, makes me happy.
It makes me happy.
Like, and, and oh, just thanks for making it worse right now.
Now I really don't understand.
Found.
I was like, that's the worst answer ever.
Right.
And, and again, I'm, I'm telling this story to
set the premise here.
Of what a toxic relationship with work looks like.
And we're not talking about his, we're talking about mine, right?
Like it didn't occur to me like first blush.
Again, I'm, I'm not that like one dimensional, but
it didn't occur to me that you could just do that.
That you could just be sitting on a Tuesday in the middle
of the work week in your pool 'cause it made you feel good.
I was like, there's gotta be some business purpose
to what's going on.
Right?
And that's where our story begins.
We dig deep enough into it.
You can find that, right?
Like, I think as, as founders, we often
conflate hustle with value.
And you know, we think if we're not, if we're not chained to
our lap to 24 7, we're slacking and not the kind of slack
where we're, we're talking to the rest of our team.
Not that slack, like just the not doing anything
kind of slacking.
Guess what, like, productivity can be floating in a pool at
2:00 PM if it recharges your brain, if it gives you the
energy you need to go back in and, and do the things right?
Like we know what the, the, the cost of burnout is.
This is the cost of the therapy that keeps us from
getting there, I suppose.
Yeah.
And you know, one of the things we do a lot of.
On this podcast, 300 episodes.
I mean, like, you know, we've almost, man, it's like 2
97 or eight or something.
Oh
damn.
I didn't realize it was that close.
I just we're real close.
I rounded it up for charity.
When I think about, you know, all the topics we've covered,
and some folks know this because some folks that listen know us.
Most of what we talk about here is a reflection
of our own journeys.
This is Ryan and I in our own therapy, the startup
therapy we're generally talking about Is ours ours?
So,
and a lot of people will comment.
They'll say like, Hey, it just sounds like I'm in the middle
of a conversation of two people.
Like unpacking something between them.
It's 'cause you are, that's actually what's happening.
Do you remember back like, this is 20 17, 18, somewhere
in there where we were like, we should do a podcast,
and then we were like.
What should we talk about?
And we went through all kinds of iterations, like
start up daily, we could cover some news, we could
do all this different stuff.
And then finally we're like, you know, what about those
conversations we have every week anyways, where we're
just talking about like, what are you going through?
What are you going through?
How are you dealing with it?
What have you been through?
Yep.
And we're like, what if we just hit record?
Yep.
And then we did.
And so here we are.
So to your point, it is very much just listening in on the
conversations of two people who live through this stuff daily
in the ironies.
If you listen to this long and they're like, man, those
guys really need therapy, which is totally true.
Not anymore.
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
On a weekly basis.
I say this to, to set the tone, to say a lot of this isn't us
talking down to founders saying, here's what you're doing wrong.
This is in real time, saying this is what we're doing
wrong, like right now.
Right.
And the self-awareness of it, of being able to say, Hey,
you know, something's broken, doesn't make it go away.
I wanna start there.
For me, I'll just kinda point to myself here.
I've spent the last 31 years in a very specific kind of
mindset, which is if I'm working, I'm valuable And okay.
And if I'm not working, I'm guilty and not now
that is wildly unhealthy.
I just wanna be clear.
Right.
Wildly unhealthy pays well, but it's wildly unhealthy.
You said
this before, but it's, it's, it was fear.
Motivation.
Yep.
Right?
Yep.
And, and, and it's about safety, right?
Yep.
So for you, it's like, if I'm working, I don't
have to be afraid because it creates safety for me.
Right?
So as long as I'm working, I'm safe.
Hundred percent.
Yeah.
I
mean that's, that's a lot to deal with.
It is, right.
It's a, it's a hell of a lot to unpack.
I think what we build up with that is a
tolerance for discomfort.
Oh yeah.
Right.
In, in so many ways.
So in the way my buddy is floating in a pool and
he's saying, Hey, I am not comfortable at work right
this minute, I'm gonna go do something comfortable.
My res response to, to not enough comfort is work
more because that will somehow create more comfort.
And sometimes it does.
Right.
But I guess what I'm saying is if we zoom out.
As founders and we say, Hey, is my relationship
with my startup healthy?
Ergo Sure.
Does it pay me back in more ways than cash?
As much as I put into it.
For everybody listening,
like I'd say 99% of you can listen to this and me
just say, probably not.
Yeah.
There's gonna be a few of, you're like, no, I actually
have a very, very healthy relationship with this.
Yeah.
Most of us don't.
For those of you that do, please create a podcast, Ryan,
and I would love to listen to it and take, I'd love to, can
follow along and do what you
do.
Yeah, just send me a note that tells me I'm wrong.
That'd be great.
But for kind of everybody else, I think part of it is because
when we go into this, Ryan, like when we start something, you
start something from nothing.
It is, there's a voluminous amount of weight in
work and commitment, discomfort and frustration.
I think because we come to expect that it builds a pattern
behavior where we just assume.
That's how it always has to be.
It's essentially starting in an abusive relationship and using
the abuse as the baseline for how the relationship works.
That's how it
functions.
Yeah.
You know, I think, and again, look, there's, there's
reasons for all this, right?
Part of it is that when we breathe life into
something new, that's it.
We're literally breathing life into it.
Without us, there isn't anything at the idea stage, even at
the early operational stages.
Without us, it doesn't do anything.
It's as if we're, we're constantly having to
give the business CPR.
Yeah.
And if we stop, we know exactly what happens.
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
There comes a point at which that's no longer necessary, but
man, the muscle memory is built at that point and we've wrapped
our entire being up in being the thing that keeps it alive.
That's just a matter of momentum and being able to recognize that
momentum going like, okay, it actually can survive without me.
But man, that's a, that's a tough moment to spot.
Part of it too is it's all consuming.
There is no startup that won't just consume all of
you if you let it right.
It is endlessly hungry.
If IPO decide to spend 16 hours straight today at my
computer, at my desk working.
The startup will consume all of it.
The startup will never tell me, Hey, it's time to go home.
The startup will never tell me, Hey, you're pretty tired.
You should probably go, go get some rest.
Right?
The startup will never tell me, you do, you know, you're, uh,
developing a terminal disease.
Yeah.
Because of this.
Right?
Like, yeah, n none of that will ever happen.
The startup will consume as much as we give it, and that's where
the danger begins because we start to believe that because
it can consume all of our time, it should consume should.
All of our time.
Exactly that.
And it, it took me a long time to start to
understand that balance.
Ryan, you said something, uh, earlier when we were talking
today about how you and I both hit the same kind of
milestone in starting families.
Yeah.
Where all of a sudden something greater than
us became that voice.
What was it like for you?
Yeah, same thing.
You know, like I think you, you said something that ties
directly to this, which was, we have a high tolerance
for this kinda thing.
Like we have a high tolerance for deferring happiness, for
deferring joy, for deferring time on ourselves and just
accumulating maladies of, of physical and mental and
emotional states and, and foregoing relationships
doing all this other stuff.
But at some point when we became partners to wives
and fathers to children.
All of a sudden I have four other people's
tolerances to consider.
Are they as tolerant of my ability to just sit at this
desk and pour myself into a monitor for 18, 19 hours a day?
The answer is no, they're not right at, at the point at which
I realized it was costing them.
And there are times where like yesterday, right?
Yesterday I took off at like two in the afternoon my time for a
couple hours to go pick up my daughters, take them to a soccer
match, watch them play, and then I get them back to school.
And then I came back to the house and continue
working at some points.
In the past, I think I still didn't really realize what
all the costs of that were.
Yeah.
I was like, you know, you, you think about the fact that like.
I dunno, whether it's, whether you miss it or you
know, they're gonna miss it.
And whether that it's either guilt or just a fear of missing
out or a combination of the two kind of doesn't matter.
But over, over time, I've started to pay more attention to
the fact that like it costs them something when I don't do that.
Right.
And so, right.
And you don't get it back.
You don't get it back.
Right.
And so I think being able to make those trade-offs right,
and I think the, you know.
It's interesting, but you, you said something else that
ties directly to this, which is that it's really hard
for us to see those things.
We will just continue to go and push and do, and we don't
necessarily notice in our own lives what you had so that we
have to look outside, right?
Mm-hmm.
So whether it's your family or not, or you call a friend
and find them floating in a pool at two o'clock in the
afternoon, a Tuesday, the fact that we can't relate to someone
else enjoying their lives, just for the sake of that.
Probably our problem, not theirs.
Oh, absolutely.
Absolutely.
And again, and we need those lenses.
Even while it was happening, you know, I, I said to my
friend, a again, he's known me for a very long time, and
he is a good sounding board.
And I said, you know, I'm laughing about this because
I know how ridiculous it is that I have a problem with it.
And I said to him, I was like, if it were me, I
would, I would be firing you right now on the phone.
And I was like, but at the same time, I also know you're right.
Right.
Yeah.
Which is, which is even harder.
And I think part of this is getting to a point where
we stop and take stock of what our values are, like
what's important to us.
Yeah.
Just like you said with your daughter and you say, these
are my non-negotiables.
Right?
These are the things that if the startup takes these,
it's not okay anymore.
It's, it's not.
A lack of having those things really laid out.
Laid out in, in very big, bold letters.
You and I have talked about this on previous episodes where we
sat down early in the process of building this company and said,
these are our non-negotiables and to our what work with jerks.
Right.
We won't work jerks.
Right?
Yep.
And when we get to Jerky Town with someone, we're
like, you know, you've never been worth it.
Never been worth it.
And every single time we were like 10% sure that this
might be a good decision.
It was always a hundred percent a good decision.
Yeah, right.
Hindsight it was always like, yep.
And the, the only thing we ever questioned was why not sooner?
Why not sooner?
Right.
And to be fair, those very same people go home and they're
like, those guys are jerks.
By the way, they're also right.
Not 'cause I think we're jerks, Ryan, but because you know,
they look at it, especially if you're being let go as
how dare them, et cetera.
Right.
I was performing
even though I was a jerk.
Yeah, yeah.
So why would they, they should have tolerated it
again.
Again.
And so, and that's one of them.
Another one is, and you touched on this, our ability to be able
to say, what's my commitment to, let's say my family?
Mm-hmm.
At what point have I given too much or could I give too much?
Yeah, and the fact that you can look at the soccer game
and say, Hey, I get that.
I could, I could avoid this.
I, I could not go and the world wouldn't end.
However, this is also one of the things that draws the line,
that's to what my values are.
And if, if I don't go, and again, it'd be different,
Ryan, if we were right in the middle of closing some
major deal and there was some make, or you're creating
a whole other consequence.
But fortunately we're not in that position where we have
some kind of consequence.
But like I think for me, I have this overarching consequence
of success, of responsibility.
You know, things like that, that I can easily
let Trump, everything, that excuse can easily apply
to 16 hours of my day.
I have to forcibly talk myself out of that
excuse for every minute.
I don't spend with that excuse, if that makes sense.
Yeah.
No, it's, it's exactly the same for me.
It's, it's the, the calculation is always in, in that order.
My default is be here for a lot of hours and do as much
as I can or more than I can.
Yep.
And just keep doing, and you have to talk yourself out of it.
I think where it came about, you talked about
some non-negotiables for me.
I've got a couple, like, one that's just
super personal is sleep.
I don't mess with it anymore.
Right.
I try not to.
My, my system's been messing, messing with itself for the
last couple weeks, but like I try not to mess with sleep.
Sleep is so important 'cause I'm way better all day when
I have the right sleep.
The other one, and this is something that I think I've
been doing a fairly good job of for a couple years now, but I
just read something a few weeks ago that reinforced it from
a, a, a childhood psychologist that said, your kids need you
on their time and their terms.
Right.
You can't say, oh, you wanna talk about that?
Well, I'm busy right now.
We'll talk about it later.
It doesn't work.
Right.
There's a real cost to them in so many ways because
the fact it was important then is why it's important.
And so I've really tried to do that and just say like, look,
I can run to catch up on work.
I can, I'll bend my sleep.
Right?
Yeah.
If I have to, right?
I will sacrifice that personally so that they're not forced to
sacrifice something at during their, you know, important
years of personal development.
I've taken it a step further where I've applied
it to my wife as well.
If she needs something, she gets it then.
Right?
My kids need something, they get it.
Then the way I analogize it to myself, 'cause for me the,
the going back to my early soccer days always helps.
And I said, you know what?
It's like having to run outta position to cover
somebody else, right?
It's the right thing to do in the moment.
Now I know I'll have to run extra hard to get back to my
position to make sure that I'm not letting somebody else down.
But if, if I gotta go cover somebody's spot.
I gotta get over there because the cost and the consequence
of that is immediate.
The cost and consequence of me being out a position
is something that happens later and I can do my
best to deal with it.
Right?
And I think that as startup founders, we're
pretty good at being able to run fast to catch up.
You know, something that's
really funny about everything we talk about
here is that none of it.
Is new.
Everything you're dealing with right now has been done a
thousand times before you, which means the answer already exists.
You may just not know it, but that's okay.
That's kind of what we're here to do.
We talk about this stuff on the show, but we actually
solve these problems all dayLong@groups.startups.com.
So if any of this sounds familiar, stop guessing
about what to do, let us just give you the answers to the
test and be done with it.
We, there is no point within my work week, the
Monday through Friday.
Yeah.
Where I ever feel.
Like, I am justified for not working and I'm not
comparing this to yours.
What, what I'm saying is it's one of the things I spend a
lot of time thinking about.
Lemme give you some, some also how I, I mitigate that.
One of the things I do, uh, and we've talked about this
in previous episodes, is I'm hyper specific about what
needs to get done today.
Because if I'm not, if I don't say, here's the one thing
that needs to get done today, I always start with one.
'cause if, if I don't get one done, it doesn't
matter if I have two.
But here's the one thing I have to get done.
And let's say I, I motor through that went faster
than I expected it to and I got two and three done.
Cool.
Now I know that I can just keep adding more shit to the list.
That's just the nature.
The list never ends.
Right?
The only way I've been able to kinda like quote
free myself from guilt is by accomplishing things.
If I knew I accomplished something, it kind of
took some of the mental, like the guilt off me.
But if I think that I'm not accomplishing something,
work could be getting done and I'm not doing it,
I'm not in a great place.
Right?
I'm just not.
No.
And I don't love that.
I think that the, the way it's worked for me is that
I, instead of feeling like down in guilt, it fires me up
to like be super productive when I get back to it.
Right?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And a lot of times, like when I was driving to, to pick up
the kids yesterday, right?
It's a 15 minute drive over to where I had to grab 'em.
So on the way over there I was doing voice notes
on the ad copy that I was gonna write when I got back.
'cause that's what I paused.
To go do that.
Right?
I had some ads I wanted to get out and I said, all right, I'm
gonna go do this thing instead.
Spent that time, get myself fired up.
Okay?
So then when I get back, I've got, I've got the, the,
the core what I need, right?
And it's not like it's, we're never really off, right?
It's so hard to complete switch off car by myself.
I've got some time.
And so for me, what I've been trying to do is just use that
as the motivation, right?
Mm-hmm.
That instead of letting that feeling just kind of like sour
within me, trying to use as a little bit of fuel to say,
okay, I'm gonna go do this.
I'm grateful that I can go do this thing with my kids.
I'm gonna use that gratitude and the fact that I am a
little anxious about not being at my desk to do this right
now, to, to, to elevate the work when I get back to it.
I think it's, I like that seems to be working.
I also think that I, I, if we look at kind of the, the, the
ROI, if you will, that our startups provide for us, the
obvious one is profit, but the, the, the reason, that's a tough
one to, um, to always align to.
Is because most of us won't get to a profitable
startup anytime soon.
Yeah.
So what ends up happening is we're like, once we get to
profit, once we make a lot of money, then we'll be happy.
And, you know, that's a, that's a bit of an elusive
goal, but let's, we'll save that for another podcast.
But because the startup is perpetually not as successful
as we want it to be.
We always feel like all other costs or commitments
are justified until we get to that threshold.
Yeah.
Okay.
What we lose when we're using that kind of math that
like it just numeric dollar sign math, profit equals
success equals happiness.
Is that we can use that.
As an escape to make ourselves miserable along the way.
It's basic saying, Hey, we just keep extending the finish line.
But the race is so grueling and so awful that even if
we cross the finish line, it won't have mattered.
We'll be dead by then.
Yeah.
It's dangerous when we don't see the other types
of ROI We need to be extracting from the startup.
For you, when, when you think about those other
types of ROI, where would you, and, and clearly like
we have to be performing within the startups, right?
It doesn't, doesn't work otherwise, but I think
the misnomer for me has always been that like there
were these points, right?
You set it like there's milestones we hit where all of
a sudden then it'll be okay.
I've been in positions where I, I loved my revenue
numbers and I hated my life.
Right?
So it it isn't necessarily correlated.
Yeah.
There's also been times where like, I've loved my life.
Just made peace with the fact that revenue wasn't where I
wanted, but hating my life and, and designing a life that
I hated wasn't gonna help me hit revenue numbers, right.
Growth on paper means nothing if it's fueling misery, and
so we've gotta find some kind of balance from that.
But for you, what would be the right after the,
the, the startup metrics, like what's the next one
that matters to you most?
I think part of it is working on
something that I care about.
Right.
Uh, uh, that's been probably maybe the number one RO
i@startups.com for me, and, and I'm guessing maybe for
you I'll, I don't wanna put words in your mouth.
I love who I work for, being the, the startups
and I love the value of, of, of what we provide.
Now, to be fair, if I wanted to optimize just for income,
I'd probably go work at a public company, right.
And climb the ranks and, and be manager guy.
I would be miserable.
Right.
I'm sure of it.
I would be miserable, but I could make more
money doing that.
However, and this goes back to the ROI, I wouldn't get any ROI.
I'd have more money in the bank, but be less happy.
And if money is, is a conduit partially to happiness, right?
Then I would actually be short circuiting that because I'd
be getting the money, but not any of the happiness.
And so when I look at startups I've built in the past, not
that I didn't like them, but they had no emotional ROI.
When I ran an ad agency, like the work was kind of
interesting, but I didn't jump outta bed in the morning
and being like, I can't wait to help Best Buy, sell
more digital cameras, right?
I don't care.
Whereas with what we do, like later on today, we're gonna
get on the phone, um, oh, I am.
I've got a bunch of office hours calls with a bunch of founders,
and I'm gonna help them work through tons of problems and.
I love that.
And to be fair, their gratitude is phenomenal, right?
They're like, man, I didn't even see that.
Or, you helped me through a really tough time period.
Ryan, we get this.
A lot of people that that listen to the show, right?
Yeah.
A hundred percent.
Yeah.
We hear that kind of feedback all the time.
Uh, we get it from our office hours.
Uh, I get the same thing from the workshops they
do on Mondays and Fridays around getting customers.
It just always feels amazing, right?
And, and those kind of things.
Truly are, I think I said this a couple weeks ago
in, in the team Slack.
I was saying that like, those are the moments that pump me up.
Like I was heads down and grinding.
I was, you know, trying to find a smoking gun around a problem
I was having within HubSpot, couldn't find it, and it was
driving me crazy and it could have completely changed my week.
And instead I was like, I get so fired up by those things
that we get to do, those interactions that we have with
the, with the startup founders that at that point, like it
just, it fills you up, right?
And if your startup is constantly leaving you
feeling hollow, then.
Any returns that you're generating as a result of that?
Kind of get couched as losses in my book, man.
Because emotional bankruptcy is a real thing.
Like it's a, it's a very real thing and I'd say that
it is almost always hand in hand with burnout for me.
Or maybe even the precursor.
Cause for the burnout, like you and I both have
incredible motors, we can just keep working.
Right.
That's not the problem.
Right, right.
When, when the work no longer rewards intrinsically,
not extrinsically, then I think it starts to
fall really flat for me.
I agree.
I also think, and this is, this is minor.
I don't think you and I have talked about this much,
but I think just the way we've designed our business,
nothing to do with the, the, the industry we're or
anything else like that.
Yeah.
I mean, the actual business that we run, we are very
hands off with the team.
Right.
Uh, team has a phenomenal level of autonomy and, and.
For me, that's a reflection because I don't wanna be up
in people's business all day.
Right.
That brings me no pleasure whatsoever.
In fact, the more I have to do it, the more miserable I am.
But, but I think it's a flip side from a culture standpoint.
The folks that work with us enjoy a phenomenal
level of autonomy.
We also know they don't always work.
Right?
There's some people that look at it as autonomy as
time in the pool, right?
I'm kidding.
But like, yeah.
And there's some people who look at autonomy and say.
I can't wait to do great work and I'm gonna do
it on a schedule that works great for me.
And we have plenty of those people here that can do that.
But what I'm saying is from kind of how we've designed this
company and how it's evolved, I'm really proud of that.
You know, I'm really proud of, of that level of autonomy.
I'm really proud that we have a culture that supports that.
'cause Ryan, if we had a different version, okay,
where in our culture it was all about hierarchy.
It was about 360 degree reviews.
It was about basically, uh, micromanagement,
et cetera, company.
I'm getting nauseous.
I wouldn't change the topic.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I wouldn't wanna work at that company.
Right.
Leadership.
Great.
Management, not so much.
Right?
Yeah.
It's just, it's the worst.
It's the worst.
There's a time and a place for it.
I totally respect it.
Yeah.
I'm not saying management is awful.
I'm saying I just don't enjoy it.
Right?
Yeah.
I just don't enjoy it at that level.
I wanna work with people who have autonomy.
I wanna work with people that are self-motivated.
Again, that doesn't always work.
I would say more often than not, it doesn't work.
As an example, this is, again, this is, we're tensioning
a little bit, but like we don't do personnel reviews.
We've never done them.
There's been no 360 degree review.
There's been nothing.
Right.
And my take on that, and again, this is all
about building something that like works for you.
My take on that is if I can't manage the person day to day
with expectations and I have to wait a year to tell them
they're not doing a good job, what the hell am I doing?
Right?
Yeah.
And, and if, if the person I'm working with has no idea how
well they're doing, I'm like, I'm really bad at my job now.
I'm, uh, maybe it's me just being lazy.
I found that the people who work really well work just fine
in that, uh, that environment and the people that don't.
Don't.
Yeah.
But my point is those things don't make me happy.
And so I've generally said, okay, let's build a
system that works for us.
We don't have to do those things.
And I think that's powerful.
It is.
And, and look, I think those are some of the
best decisions we've made.
And you know, they don't show up directly on a p and l.
Clearly I think that they do impact it, but they're not the
kind of things where it just shows directly on, on a PL.
But they keep us energized.
They keep us happy, they keep us creative and and
that matters a lot, right?
You can't deposit happiness in a bank, I suppose, but
you can't buy your sanity back with money either.
So we gotta be careful of what we're trading
at any given point.
You know?
Here's a different way I'd phrase it.
Money makes me safe.
Yeah.
But the work I do and how I spend my time makes me happy.
Can, can.
Yeah.
I'm saying, right?
Like, I think that's,
that's the important part
in this case.
It it, it does.
And, and let me build on that.
I've spent way too much time thinking about the
things that make me happy.
Uh, the activities that make me happy, fun fact, they generally
don't cost anything, right?
The, the, the things that I enjoy doing.
I enjoy playing hockey, enjoy playing t spend
time with my family.
I enjoy, uh, building stuff.
I, whatever.
They generally don't cost much.
I'm building a house now that, that does cost money, but
it, that's just incidental.
I could be working on anything else as a project.
Yeah.
You know?
Like that wouldn't necessarily have that
cost associated with it.
And so again, I look at money, not as if I have
more, my happiness is gonna go up, but if I have left,
my safety is gonna go down.
So I look at that as kinda like my baseline in the
formative years of my life.
Before I was an adult, I was poor and I wasn't unhappy,
but I was very unsafe.
And I can tell you from that experience, it's very
hard to be consistently happy while being unsafe.
Those two things there, there are a correlation,
they're different.
Yeah.
They're correlated, they're diametrically opposed, right?
Like, I'd say it's, I wouldn't say it's difficult.
It's, it's gotta be nearly impossible.
If you're not safe, how can you be happy?
Conversely, though, if you are safe, you know you're
financially well off.
It also doesn't guarantee happiness.
It doesn't work the other way.
It does not.
It's, uh, it's something I always say is money may not
buy you happiness, but you're rarely happier without it.
I
think what it comes down to is figuring out what
that, like, what that actual threshold for safety is.
Yeah.
Like at some point if you just keep chasing more and more and
more and more safety, like what are you building safety against?
Right.
You be, it's like the difference between, you
know, having batteries in a flashlight, I. Building
a bunker in your backyard.
Right, right, right, right.
They're both derived some level of safety, and then
you gotta decide how much safety do I actually need?
I think that's where we, we can get it wrong and maybe
we don't take our, our foot off the, the safety gas pedal
soon enough and start to apply some, some effort to
happiness because I. For years, we're, we're measuring our
success by how much discomfort we can tolerate, right?
Like, I'm willing to be here and I'm gonna grind,
I'm gonna build, I'm gonna do, uh, and then we wonder
why we're desperate to exit a business, right?
Like, like you and I both were, uh, around the, the
early agencies where it's like, yeah, I don't wanna do this
anymore, please with my hands.
And so.
I think it comes down to just picking that point and
saying like, this is safe enough, and now I can start
to focus on bringing some joy into this equation,
but stick with that.
I think it's important for, at the very least, for us
to get like a milestone that says, Hey, the business isn't
where I want it to be yet.
That's usually the case.
Okay, I get that, but that's not a perennial excuse for
me to allow it to make me miserable all the time.
Because if I agree that it's okay for the business to make me
miserable, yeah, and this, this has nothing to do with whether
you're willing to sacrifice.
There's always a sacrifice to be had.
There's no deliberate stopping point in sacrifice.
This goes back to the business being all consuming and for
decades, not even years.
For decades.
I didn't appreciate that threshold.
I thought wrongly that there was something on the other
side that would automatically tell me I don't have to
behave like this anymore.
And there wasn't.
I mean, you know, one of the things I, when I talk to people
who are substantially successful and they have bigger enterprises
now, is they're like, I have way more mouths to feed now.
Right.
Like, my problems are much bigger now.
Yeah.
Like my pressure's gone way up and I'm like.
Damn.
Not only have you not gotten over the threshold,
you made it higher.
Right.
That's scary.
I think it goes back to something you said at the very
beginning, which is like the the abusive relationship model
where then you just start to build on that and you just
continue to build more of that abuse into what you're doing.
Right.
At some point, like I. All you're doing is creating
more obligation to grind.
Right.
And I think that one of the things for me, and, and
this speaks to the fact, like you said, we're, you
know, we built a team that we love, we love being with,
and we don't have to manage.
We, we've built clients that we love hanging out with.
Yeah.
And, and can drive amazing results for.
But I, I see so many founders building out of just.
Fear and obligation.
They're like, well, I've managed to get it to this point.
Now I just have to keep doing this because now
it's at least paying the bills or whatever it is.
Whatever the thing that like Right.
Maintenance will keep, it will, will keep you
some level of safe.
Right.
I think if you ask most of those, if, if you took the
obligation out of it, the obligation to grind against this
thing, would you still do this?
Right.
And I feel like in a lot of cases the answer
would've been no.
Like if I didn't feel obliged to grind towards
the end of the agency.
I would've stopped because I was not enjoying it.
I wasn't building anything meaningful anymore, and
I just didn't really care about the business.
And it sounds bad, but you've said the same thing before.
I didn't really care about the clients.
Well, not in the same way that I care about some of
the folks that you and I know within startups.com where
like, I legitimately care what happens to these people.
Like I want to know.
And I want you to feel good about it, but I think, you
know, if, if you're not, if you can't say, if I take the
obligation outta this, would I still grind in the same way?
You're probably building something you're gonna
resent at some point.
I
agree.
And what's interesting is how much of this is
from our own making?
This is, this is a little bit out there, but, but
bear with me, I picture this version of me.
Okay.
That's Edward Norton in Fight Club Uhhuh.
And I've built this person that I live with being my startup.
That's Tyler Durden, right?
Yeah.
That's constantly pushing me to get my ass kicked you on
to do things.
Yep.
Right.
And at the end of the movie, I realize he's me.
Yeah.
Yeah, right.
Like it wasn't actually a person.
I was the one who created all that.
Yeah.
And I think that's part of what this is, is we can wake
up tomorrow and we can have the version of our startup
company where we've got a happy relationship, a non-abusive,
or we can continue to create this fight club, Tyler Durden,
Brad Pitt, you know, archetype that will constantly kick
our ass and have us feel like we're a victim of this thing.
The difference in the two.
Is us, right?
That's the difference of the two, is our ability to
wake up tomorrow and say, to hell with this, right?
I, I'm not gonna live like this.
I'm not gonna create this thing that was supposed to
be beautiful, but be becomes abusive and let that beat me.
The only way I'm ever, ever, ever going to be able to get
out of this trap is to wake up tomorrow and do it differently.
Overthinking your startup because you're going it alone.
You don't have to, and honestly, you shouldn't because instead,
you can learn directly from peers who've been in your shoes.
Connect with bootstrap founders and the advisors
helping them win in the startups.com community.
Check out the startups.com community@www.startups.com
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