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The "No BS" version of how startups are really built, taught by actual startup Founders who have lived through all of it. Hosts Wil Schroter and Ryan Rutan talk candidly about the intense struggles Founders face both personally and professionally as they try to turn their idea into something that will change the world.
00;00;00;00 - 00;00;21;07
Unknown
Welcome back to the episode of the Start Up Therapy podcast. Is Ryan written, joined as always by Will Schroeder, my friend, the founder and CEO of start ups.com will know no shortage of discussion around ambition in the founder space, right? We have to be ambitious. We're going to go build something that's never existed before. based on nothing more than an idea and some blood, sweat and lots of tears.
00;00;21;10 - 00;00;41;19
Unknown
And I think it often gets touted as a superpower, particularly on social media. You know, the ambitious founder out there, killing it, doing it, burning both ends the candle and just making it work. But there's real cost to this, right? Like, let me see the other side of this. We talk to founders day in, day out. What's what's your view on on ambition is this double edged sword I think nobody talks about the cost of it right.
00;00;41;25 - 00;01;06;02
Unknown
It'd be the equivalent of like having a marathon runner. And they're running and they're winning the marathon like so. On paper they're winning. But while they're doing it, their bodies getting dehydrated and they're dying and you're cheering them on as they collapse across the finish line, it's like, well, what just happened here? We have this weird thing, you know, among startups, among founders, where we celebrate ambition, of course, and ambition on its surface sounds wonderful.
00;01;06;02 - 00;01;29;23
Unknown
And I'm not knocking ambition, but there is a cost to ambition. And that's the part that as founders in the startup community, etc., we kind of don't talk about. And it feels like everybody just like, like scuttles away and deals with it in the corner. I know I did. It scares me because, you know, we have so many great founders that are, you know, not to do great things, but behind the scenes they're a mess.
00;01;29;23 - 00;01;44;22
Unknown
And I think you should talk about what that cost looks like when it comes to ambition, what do you think the core source of this is? I mean, like I said, at the top, like we sort of have to be ambition. Ambition is a necessary ingredient because if you're not ambitious, you're not going to wake up one morning and go, you know what?
00;01;44;22 - 00;01;59;00
Unknown
This thing doesn't exist. Yeah, right. Anybody would buy it. I don't know if anybody cares about anybody I want to work on with, you know, if anybody would give me money to do it, I'm going to go do it right. Like, if you don't have ambition, you're not going to start it. So I think it's important to recognize that it isn't necessary ingredient.
00;01;59;00 - 00;02;14;29
Unknown
But like I think you and I see all the time, people go from a pinch to a cup to a pound to a truckload and this is where it starts to become a problem in all the conversations you're having right now. Or is this across the board? Is this at a later stage? Thing is something really early stage founders need to be concerned about?
00;02;14;29 - 00;02;34;17
Unknown
Or is this like, I'm 15 years into this thing now. My ambition is caught and, you know, it's actually what I've learned or what I've witnessed. And I'm curious, your thoughts of what you see is it gets progressively worse. It's almost like a virus. Here's how I see it metastasize. If you kind of stick with that analogy, what ends up happening is that we start off by being super ambitious.
00;02;34;20 - 00;02;52;05
Unknown
Obviously, that's why we start a startup. To begin, what happens with that ambition is whether we realize it or not. We start raising the bar. We start setting a benchmark for what our output and what our accomplishments need to be. When do you ever hear someone say, man, coming out of college, I always wanted to be able to make 100 K, but now I make 100 K.
00;02;52;05 - 00;03;19;17
Unknown
Don't you do anything else that would not be found to not be ambition? And yet we have this weird thing where whatever we accomplish doesn't become the goal, it becomes the benchmark. And so we keep ratcheting up. I know I've dealt with this personally, and all of a sudden you realize that you've raised the bar, the benchmark so high that anything but that in the amount of blood, sweat and tears that it takes to sustain, that becomes a step backward.
00;03;19;24 - 00;03;36;00
Unknown
And I'm just going to mention this because as we're recording this, I think, you know, we're in the middle of the Paris Olympics. And, you know, I just watched Simone Biles just clean up the medals and in the the Olympics. Yeah, but the entire time. And it's just such a perfect example this the entire time, everyone's like, yeah, but she had that tough time in Tokyo and yeah.
00;03;36;06 - 00;03;59;23
Unknown
And it's like, yeah, dude, she won more medals than anyone. Of course there's an insane amount of pressure. There's a cost. Yeah, yeah, it's the cost. Now, I'd say I think sports is an easy analogy here because. But but you know, the thing that athletes don't do is continue to push after they've won. And I think part of the challenge in the startup space is we don't necessarily have these clear delineations of what we're actually truly using our ambition to drive.
00;03;59;23 - 00;04;18;10
Unknown
I think ambition is like great fuel, but there's a point where you get a little off the gas a little bit, and I think this is where founders get it wrong. Sometimes we just don't know when that moment comes where it's like, I don't actually need to be pedal to the metal. The benefit is now far outweighed by the cost of continuing this until we draw another completely random analogy.
00;04;18;14 - 00;04;35;09
Unknown
My six year old is into anything mechanical, and the latest thing being trains were here in. As of this recording, I'm in Madrid. I've been doing a lot of train travel, a lot of subways, and he is all about it. So we downloaded a train simulator a couple days ago, and we've been spending our evenings in this thing now extremely detailed.
00;04;35;09 - 00;04;50;18
Unknown
I won't go into all of it, but one of the things that he's had to realize is that, like the amount of power it takes to get the train moving is very different than what it takes to sustain it. has interesting on the gas on the train in particular. Once that thing builds momentum, you actually have the speed you need.
00;04;50;21 - 00;05;13;19
Unknown
You have to slow down or really bad things happen in this case, derailment of the train. In our case, it's a derailment founder and often the starter right along with it. And I think that's the point. That's really hard for founders to gauge is when do I actually need to back off the ambition throttle so that I can move this thing forward at pace, but not at breakneck speed, not something that's dangerous to me and the business.
00;05;13;20 - 00;05;36;23
Unknown
I think that's the part we scrap all the time is right. You don't realize it really is a danger to us and the business pushing too hard can lead the entire team to collapse. And I think a lot, you know personally about how I got here because, you know, I'm definitely afflicted with this problem. What my mission is without without a doubt my greatest enemy to my health like to which I have weekly examples of this, I can I can vouch for you on this one.
00;05;36;23 - 00;05;53;26
Unknown
Well, yes you do. Yeah I do. And so where it started for me was when I was 19, I was starting my first company. I had no cost to my ambition. I think that's so important to kind of start with. Right. So I'm at a point where I have nothing, you know, I came from nothing. And so in my eyes, ambition equals survival.
00;05;54;01 - 00;06;14;05
Unknown
Mostly in ambition equals progress. I looked at it like, hey, I got an idea. What if I just work every waking hour for the rest of my life? And people exaggerate when they say that I'm not exaggerating. We're talking every waking hour, while some people will look at that, myself included. And again, I've got a love hate relationship with this discussion in.
00;06;14;05 - 00;06;34;03
Unknown
Some people will look at that and say, that's great, right? That's noble, that you're willing to work hard. There's there's not a lot of people that will say work hard is bad per se, right? It's considered a good ethic, especially in the US. However, no one ever tells you until what point it's no longer okay, I'm 19. I just put myself completely into starting, you know, an internet company back then.
00;06;34;06 - 00;06;51;18
Unknown
I get to a point where my baseline, Brian, is every hour of every day. First four years of my career, I never took a day off. Didn't even occur to me. You could take a day off. When I say take a day off, I'm including weekends, holidays, whatever. I need to see my family for like four years. I was psychotic about it.
00;06;51;21 - 00;07;09;16
Unknown
Now, to be fair, I loved it like I was. I was so excited the entire time. So here's why I bring that up. That became my benchmark, that sure, to this day, that's baseline. 30 years later, dude, 30 years later, that is still my benchmark for productivity. And think about what a dangerous baseline that is, right? When you set like every waking hour.
00;07;09;20 - 00;07;27;06
Unknown
Oh, there's no where to go from there, right? That's that's that's one standard. Like you can't go backwards. You also can't go up. So it leaves you feeling trapped at that point. Like how do you do more. How do you feel like you're making any progress when you're already spending every single bit of it all the time? You've got nowhere to go up.
00;07;27;06 - 00;07;47;14
Unknown
You got nowhere to go down? I mean, it's such a beautiful recipe for founder disaster. We've seen it manifest a couple times in our lives. Oh, yeah? Yeah. And that's the thing, man. Like, take like someone winning a Super Bowl, you know, as an example, right? What do you do after that? Like take Simone Biles like we just talked about winning the is you went to Disneyland I don't know if they still do that I don't know.
00;07;47;17 - 00;08;11;24
Unknown
It's true. But like like seriously like all you can do is win another Super Bowl. You're you're far for progress. Is winning the Super Bowl like that is your benchmark no longer your goal Simone Biles clean up every medal you could win. Right. what else could that girl that's for her now, right? Win more medals? Like, by the way, in order for her to even, like, contribute to her baseline, she has to win all the gold medals.
00;08;11;26 - 00;08;34;02
Unknown
Yeah, right. Yeah. Think of anything that would be harder to achieve. Yeah. First person to win all the medals a second time. Right. Like, come on, man you nasty benchmark. And those are extreme examples. But it's also an example of people who could not have possibly achieved more now have an impossible baseline. And I think that gets really interesting.
00;08;34;02 - 00;08;53;09
Unknown
And forget like their superstar success, it applies at every level. My 12 year old daughter, who's amazing, is smart as can be, has an A+ average. You know, I've talked about this, right. She's got it a 100.3 GPAs rate. Right. Which is more than A-plus, which means she also gets all her extra credit. Right? Extra credits. Yeah. Right.
00;08;53;09 - 00;09;10;04
Unknown
Where does she go from here exactly? I don't know, I already have a series of care packages, lined up and ready for the day if it ever comes where she gets just like a standard A or an A-minus, because she's going to need at that point. It's going to be that look. And it scares me, right? It scares me.
00;09;10;04 - 00;09;29;15
Unknown
Yeah. I'm so proud of her. Don't get me wrong. Right. I mean, she's just it's so hard. But that's that's. But this is the double edged sword of ambition. It's exactly. It's admirable. It's amazing, but it's dangerous. Especially when we set it like that early. Right. So when we're talking about like. And these things often do start is like childhood patterns that carry into adolescence, that carry into young adulthood occurring in adults and throughout our careers.
00;09;29;15 - 00;09;47;12
Unknown
But it goes back to the train analogy. Like at that early stage, you have to push, you have to set some of these standards for yourself so that you know what you're capable of. You've learned to accomplish, you learned the value, those things, but at some point you do have to back off throttle. And I think this is where we see founders who are like, look, this thing needs every waking moment.
00;09;47;12 - 00;10;03;28
Unknown
For that first year you were running the agency. You probably need it every single week. I don't I walked in times harder. Yep. Going into year two, probably a little less than that. Maybe know a lot less. Maybe a little less. Yeah. by year 3 or 4, if you're still doing that, what did you actually doing right at that point?
00;10;03;28 - 00;10;22;12
Unknown
Yeah. Some point you have to start to replace work hard with work a little smarter, work a little less, work a little something so that it's sustainable. Otherwise you do just end up burning out and breaking down. But again, it's such a hard thing to see. That's the thing. And it's such an easy answer. It never fails when the tool, the founder fails until the founder breaks.
00;10;22;12 - 00;10;35;20
Unknown
That will always be the right answer. So what do I do? How do I make this work faster? You work more. How do we make this work harder? You work more. How do I grow this bigger? Work more, you do more. There comes a point at which a founder can't. Right? And you end up in sickbed or something worse.
00;10;35;20 - 00;10;56;14
Unknown
Right? And we've seen it happen time and time again. And that can have major, major impacts. And how long is your roster of founder friends at this point where they are now very focused on their health because they've been forced to? Yeah, exactly. Because of bad things that have happened to them. How many of them were just like, you know, I really had this awakening in my early 20s where I wanted to take care of myself, and I've done it ever since.
00;10;56;14 - 00;11;14;11
Unknown
I know no one like that. By the way, the problem with being young is your health isn't a cost yet, right? And frankly, you can abuse the hell out of your body and mind at such an absolute level that you'll never get to do again. And by way of that, build a habit that is so bad. I'll give you an example.
00;11;14;11 - 00;11;31;02
Unknown
Until I was 30 years old, I actually didn't know what a calorie was. It didn't occur to me that you could eat too much food and still not have that really quick. Man 30 teaches that really quick and I remember like the day I hit 30, I like pinched my side. I'm like, what the hell that come from?
00;11;31;02 - 00;11;48;26
Unknown
Right. Sure. What is this? For 30 years I could go and just abuse myself. Like I would eat entire packages of eel fudges, which are so delicious, right? I got a Sunday evening while I watched a movie that had to be, like 10,000 calories. Like like. Yeah, exactly. No no no no, don't even worry. Same belt size. Yep.
00;11;48;26 - 00;12;10;29
Unknown
Doesn't matter. I didn't even get it. But because my health was kind of taking care of itself, right? It was making up for my horrible decisions. I built a habit, a benchmark in a muscle that basically said you couldn't do that stuff and not worry about it now. Yeah, take that a step further, right? Like everyone kind of understands, while your fudges are wildly delicious, that they're not good for you.
00;12;10;29 - 00;12;28;20
Unknown
Okay, now let's take it a different direction. And let's say in that same time period, right? I'm also working insane hours at a level of intensity and stress that there's no version that can be healthy, but I'm being rewarded for it. This is the dangerous part. Yep, that's the thing. It's all reward with no cost at that point.
00;12;28;20 - 00;12;52;18
Unknown
Unfortunate, exactly. Youth is a disease. We only suffer in old age, right? Like it's absolutely true. It's so hard, right? Like, again, you're just constantly rewarded for overdoing it, overdoing it, overdoing. And until that bill becomes do and it doesn't until much later, we just enjoy nothing. Nothing but the rewards. And then all of a sudden the bill comes through and it's a lot less fun.
00;12;52;20 - 00;13;15;20
Unknown
And look, we have a culture that is all about rewarding sacrifice, and it's kind of the nature of what we do it. And I don't want to discount that. Right. But that is a necessary evil, that the hard work is necessary. The risk is necessary. All those things are necessary. Never once on this show have you ever said you can not do all of those things right or have no risk, have no hard work, whatever, and money will magically fall out.
00;13;15;20 - 00;13;34;15
Unknown
A ceiling ain't going to happen. What we're saying is there is a part on the other side of this where you do those things. You put in the work, you put in the ambition. You hit those milestones where all of a sudden a cancer starts to form, either figuratively or literally. And it's something that's so easy to ignore, but it will catch up with you.
00;13;34;15 - 00;13;55;22
Unknown
It always catches up with you. I built a habit in my 20s that you work as hard as you can for as long as you can, until your body fails. Dude, we carried that shit into our 30s, man. I remember there was like every year it would happen. Like, typically twice a year for each of us. We're just like, all of a sudden one was just disappear, like, I'm dead this week, right?
00;13;55;22 - 00;14;14;15
Unknown
And it just you can't. You just literally couldn't go on any further. I remember one of them was the most market for me, and this one we earned like, we really earned. It was the virtual acquisition. I still remember after like 3 or 4 days of like, not quite no sleep, but pretty close. Yeah, pretty close to no sleep.
00;14;14;20 - 00;14;36;05
Unknown
I remember coming home, taking a shower, eating something. I lived a mile from the shops that point, got dressed, had my over the shoulder bag over my shoulder, shoes on, sat down on the bed for something. I woke up there 5.5 hours later, still basically sitting. Lean back against the bed right my bag on, my shoes on, and my wife looking me going.
00;14;36;05 - 00;14;54;09
Unknown
I should have moved you, but I didn't want to wake you. Yeah, I could have, right? At some point the bill becomes do it. The bill becomes doing so. So what ends up happening though, is we start hardcoding these behaviors at an early age. That was the thing, dude. It didn't feel like there was anything wrong. Was like, this is the program, right?
00;14;54;09 - 00;15;10;04
Unknown
I this is what I do. What do you mean? What do I mean? This is weird. No it's not. My problem is my ambition didn't come with a shut off. My ambition didn't come with a shut off now. Right. So at no point did it say, hey, you're good here as we're recording today, no matter what I do at work today, it won't be enough.
00;15;10;04 - 00;15;27;06
Unknown
And here's the irony. I'm on. I'm about to go on vacation. Like, I like eight hours, right? I still feel that way. I don't have this ability. I never built this muscle where I can say, you're good, right? So when we talk about this, you know, this isn't me saying, hey, I can't believe everybody else can't figure this out.
00;15;27;09 - 00;15;48;02
Unknown
Dude, I can't figure this out. I'm just saying no, I'm just identifying the problem. I'm by no means saying I have, like, the answer. 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.
00;15;48;02 - 00;16;07;01
Unknown
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 day long at group start 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.
00;16;07;03 - 00;16;28;22
Unknown
We've built up this horrible habit, right? We've flexed this muscle. It is now the strongest muscle we have. Let's talk about the actual cost. Right? Because we talked about health a little bit. That's a fairly obvious one. Burnouts there. We talk about technical debt and we're building products. But what is the debt that we're accumulating. What are the costs that add up as we are just burning it at both ends?
00;16;28;25 - 00;16;48;17
Unknown
And ambition is the North Star and the fuel, and it's just all consuming or it's relationships. It's our physical or mental health or no medical health. Biggest danger, I think, in all this is most of us don't see it yet till it's too late. I was telling the story before about falling asleep sitting up on a bed. I didn't feel tired, right?
00;16;48;18 - 00;17;06;18
Unknown
I didn't know, so we started. Wasn't like I should probably take a nap. I was like, I got time. I used to get back in the game and then I was asleep. Right. So you don't see it coming until it literally hits you over that. Let's talk about the things that you see right away and the things that are happening just as quickly, but you don't see the first thing you see right away.
00;17;06;18 - 00;17;26;16
Unknown
This is always kind of funny, is you're going broke. Yeah. There's that it's numeric. Right. You check your bank balance. That one's easy. Oh my god. So I just had a memory of walking in with the worst piece of facetious good news I had ever delivered. I was like, good news, guys, we've got three zeros back in the bank balance.
00;17;26;16 - 00;17;42;01
Unknown
Bad news? There's a negative sign in front of it this time. Oh my God, look at the team laugh. That was funny. I guess at the time we were all really young to get like, it didn't matter. Like we were great. Haha. Doesn't matter. Like we're young. We'll figure it out. Like we'll eat less eel fudge tonight. But yes, that is definitely one of them.
00;17;42;01 - 00;17;58;28
Unknown
Around that time, I distinctly remember going to the ATM and I needed to get money to buy food, and I couldn't get any money out because the ATM only dispense $20 and I didn't have $20. I had $16 and I couldn't get I couldn't get my mail ATM somewhere and, that's hysterical. Is there an ATM that just has dollar bills?
00;17;58;28 - 00;18;18;17
Unknown
Me like a strip club? I don't even know, right? But definitely a sad low point. But you tend to notice, right, that because it's numeric. Okay, now there's a spectrum of things that happened from there to the end point on the other end of the scale, which I'm going to say is your health. Your health becomes the one thing you can't ignore, right?
00;18;18;17 - 00;18;33;20
Unknown
Especially when it goes exponentially bad. So along the way, it kind of like like chapters along the way. The first thing you don't notice, but it happens almost immediately are your relationships. It's you're just not hanging out with your friends as much. They call and said, hey, are you getting together now? I can't, I got to do x, y, z, right?
00;18;33;23 - 00;18;48;02
Unknown
That's one I definitely noticed. Definitely notice. Right? Because you do start saying no all the time and I think you realize I did. At least I realize I'm starting to say no all the time. Started saying all the time, like the other muscle. I just got really good at flexing it. I got really good at saying no. I got really good at not going.
00;18;48;04 - 00;19;02;17
Unknown
The thing I totally didn't recognize what the cost of that was going to be your time. Yep. Then that's the thing. And you know, I've talked about this before. Our kids come in to say hi to us, right? Yeah. And we run a little bit of math that says, like the task I have to get done right now versus a son.
00;19;02;17 - 00;19;23;20
Unknown
One hug of fucked up. Is it that we even run that math, right? Like, I hate the fact that that even enters my mind. Yeah, exactly. That should not involve calculus. That's what I'm saying. But it's it's this hard coded behavior barrier that I've developed over a long period of time as a consequence to my ambition. Right. And again, everyone talks about how an ambition has all these positive things.
00;19;23;20 - 00;19;39;04
Unknown
And I'm like, it, does it look, I owe everything I've ever achieved to ambition. So again, I call it what it is, right as I watched it develop it. I'm a pretty introspective guy. I start to look at things like, that's that probably isn't right. Okay, so the relationships is one now relationships, a lot of different things.
00;19;39;04 - 00;19;57;12
Unknown
I mentioned friends, but it's your spouse where like when's the last time you not you, but like one last time you went on a date or when's the last time you just spent time together without work being a fact? But for most founders, like almost never. When is the last time you got together with a friend? Not because you had a purpose, but because you had time to get together with a friend?
00;19;57;14 - 00;20;14;22
Unknown
I just had this before we got on the podcast, was talking to a new founder friend, was asking me for some advice on on things like networking, and I just ask, what's your plan? How are you doing right now? And it was so transactional and it was so like tit for tat, like, what do I get from each one of these people I want to talk to?
00;20;14;22 - 00;20;30;29
Unknown
It's not like I really want to see you warm this process up a little bit. I really want to see you not make this just about like they're so purposeful. It has to have a point. Like each and every conversation has to have a predefined outcome so that I know whether I won or lost, like, oh yeah, that's going to leave you.
00;20;30;29 - 00;20;49;27
Unknown
Maybe you'll get some outcomes, but boy, you're going to be you're going to be fried or you have no friends. so we talked slightly more gently. To me, that tends to dovetail into the next chapter, which is the cost of your mental well-being. It just as you start to disconnect from people, even the biggest introvert at some level needs some level of, you know, connectivity or discussion.
00;20;49;27 - 00;21;14;10
Unknown
It generally doesn't make you feel better, right? Even if you can go hardcore and say, yeah, I don't need anybody else, I'm good by myself, whatever. At some point, regardless of whether your friends are driving it or not, this level of ambition and intensity has a massive cost to your mental well-being. Another way that it drags it down is again, like every day for me, I wrestle with the fact that no matter what I get done, no matter what I get done, I could have done more.
00;21;14;11 - 00;21;30;01
Unknown
It's a good point, and I think it's one of those things again where like, I feel like that gets rewarded in front of mind. So often this thing is like, you know, I'm a lone soldier, I'm the lone wolf. I asked this question, so when we run our workshops that we do well, guard funding 101 or, pitch day perfection.
00;21;30;04 - 00;21;43;21
Unknown
I run some polls during those and I ask people some questions. One of the questions that I ask is about like how they're approaching this thing, you know, or, you know, are you working with a team? Are you, seeking external help, are you or. No, I'm a wolf pack of one is one of the responses. And the no.
00;21;43;21 - 00;22;02;17
Unknown
One wolf pack of one tends to be in the minority of the responses, which I'm always happy to see. But in this now I'm giving away a secret here for anybody. It's listening. So they may not answer this in the future. Anybody who answers that I'm a wolf pack of one I sent a personal email to afterwards saying, hey, so you said you're wolf back one, I want you to know you don't need to be.
00;22;02;17 - 00;22;16;11
Unknown
If you need an ear, I'm here. Sometimes we're wolf pack one by choice, sometimes we're not. And it's amazing the response I get from those because I think that again, it's so people are so conditioned to like, this is what I have to do. I'm the ambitious one. I'm on my own. I'm no one's going to hunt and kill everything that we're going to eat.
00;22;16;11 - 00;22;42;14
Unknown
Okay, cool. Until it's not. I think the other side of it too, especially this is by definition, a very lonely journey. Even if you have hundreds of people working or a company. I think part of sometimes even more so when there's hundreds of people. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Just as isolated. Yep. Agreed. I think what happens to is we look at our accomplishments, our ambition as a source of validation, and all of a sudden, for a enough period of time, that validation turns into insecurity.
00;22;42;18 - 00;22;57;29
Unknown
It wasn't enough, and it was what I said earlier in the show. I said, hey, at the beginning, if I ever made $100,000, I'd be happier than hell. And then you make it and you're like, well, now I'm not making 200. And all of a sudden what you had isn't enough. And that is the definition of being an ambitious founder.
00;22;57;29 - 00;23;14;05
Unknown
Is that what you have isn't enough and you have to have more. How often you hear work, jump in the high jump, and we hold the bar in our hands while we do it right. No matter how people jump, the bar just keeps going up. Yeah, it's like, how often do you hear founders say, one day we wanted to get to $1 million companies at $1 million?
00;23;14;05 - 00;23;28;24
Unknown
Everybody, we're good here, right? Stop selling more. We're at $1 million. It's. You could be out of your mind if you said that. Right? The one of the ones that kills me is when people just talk about, like, compounded growth rates, and they're just like, we want to achieve this growth rate. Then I was like, okay, so where will that put you in 18 months?
00;23;28;24 - 00;23;43;15
Unknown
And they're like, they have no idea. It was just like they just wanted to grow like it was an arbitrary growth number. And I'm like, well, you know, like that there should be like some benchmark you're trying to hit. They're right. Like, what's top one revenue, what's EBITDA? What is it you're trying to achieve with that 10% month over month growth or whatever it is?
00;23;43;15 - 00;24;00;11
Unknown
They're like, we just felt like that was a strong growth number. Yeah. No, I get it. And so as you move down that spectrum I think about now we're broke. Now our relationships are suffering. Now, of course with that our mental well-being is suffering. And then that finishes the last step of that train is your health. Last step is where your health just gives up.
00;24;00;11 - 00;24;19;01
Unknown
Now for me often, like I would be sick every six weeks for like 20 years. I was constantly, constantly sick because what I did is I just worked every possible hour as hard as I possibly could, and eventually my body just gave up. Just quit. Yeah. You know, like we talked about earlier, it's like, I remember this happening twice a year, right?
00;24;19;02 - 00;24;35;25
Unknown
Every year for like ten years. It's just like it's crawl to the finish line over and over. And it was one of these things where I built this habit that I don't have to stop or pace myself because my body will tell me when it when we're done right now messed up or taking that as a positive signal.
00;24;36;01 - 00;24;53;15
Unknown
Oh my body so smart. It knows when and how to totally shut me down. And this is awesome. I mean come on man. Right. Like, and I gotta say, even though, you know, we've talked about this before, like my my heart stopping all you did, it kind of said, hey, maybe we should use it. Stop this a bit.
00;24;53;17 - 00;25;12;28
Unknown
But beyond that, I'm starting to realize and again, as as I get not young, I'm starting to realize that I can't even gamble anymore. It's not even like, hey, let me see how it goes. Now I've got to be like, there's I have friends that are in my age group now, right late 40s, now into their 50s, who have like significant heart problems, who have significant health problems.
00;25;12;28 - 00;25;32;29
Unknown
Right. Bypass surgeries. Oh my God. Right. And it's like these valves, you know, we're not playing with house money anymore. Like this is dangerous. And I think here's what happens. We get to the end of that journey if you will, in our health gives out in for every founder I've ever talked to that is like even the most hard headed founders are like, hey, maybe we got a problem here.
00;25;33;00 - 00;25;52;29
Unknown
It reminds me of, you know, with Steve Jobs, like in his battle with cancer, the end of his career. He died young, in his 50s, in like, he's like, no, I can just, like, outwork it, basically. And I was like, damn, dude, talk about your ambition. The thing that's supposed to make you so clear, clouding your judgment at the most epic level.
00;25;52;29 - 00;26;13;16
Unknown
I mean, we're watching it in real time with Elon Musk now as he's becoming batshit crazy, you know, easily the most ambitious person alive, right? But his judgment in his just about to face the other side of that sword, it feels like man unfortunately righteous knight. and he's actually been fairly public about his battles with depression and anxiety and everything else like that.
00;26;13;16 - 00;26;33;28
Unknown
And again, dude, that's Elon Musk, right? I mean, again, you can't get more ambition. Ambitious, right? Right is the benchmark for ambition, but also everything that comes with it. Right. That's it. But so use use Simone Biles is the contrast there Tokyo Olympics. Yeah. She hit pause. She's like I'm just not going to do this. I realized that my ambition has gotten the better of me.
00;26;33;28 - 00;26;48;23
Unknown
Yep. I'm hurting myself strong. I'm just not going to do this. And it's going to be really unpopular. And I'm going to take I'm going to eat a torrent of shit from the internet for doing this. And she did. Yep. And she came back and she did. She did the right thing then and she the right thing now.
00;26;48;23 - 00;27;05;24
Unknown
She came back and and prove that you can come back and do what you need to do if you take care of yourself. If she had pushed through, then who knows? Maybe she would have won the medals. Then maybe she would know. Doesn't matter. Yeah, right. She proved that. You can pause your ambition. There is a safety valve there that can be exercised if you're, you know, kind of aware enough and know how to do it.
00;27;05;24 - 00;27;24;16
Unknown
Kudos to her because she's definitely got a better handle on it than I do. and more gold medals. And here's something to that. I always think about that clouding of judgment, in contrast to what I consider a rational person would look at our lives or our decisions and make a call. A couple of weeks ago, I'm driving home from a fender lunch and I call.
00;27;24;16 - 00;27;36;04
Unknown
One of my buddies is a friend of mine that, you know, we're sitting there, it's like 2:00, let's see on a Tuesday. And I'm driving home and I'm like, hey, yeah, you know, I've got to do this and this and this or whatever. And he's like, oh, that's cool. He's like, I'm actually just sit in my pool right now just floating around.
00;27;36;08 - 00;27;53;22
Unknown
I'm like, wait, what? He's like, yeah, you know, my meetings are done for the day. I'm, you know, do you need help? Yeah, exactly. I'm like, wait, I'll be there with a life preserver and a waterproof phone so you can get back to work. Dude, it didn't even occur to me that anyone could ever do that at 2:00 on Tuesday, right?
00;27;53;22 - 00;28;10;23
Unknown
Like. And he was so cavalier about it, right. You know, I said to him on the phone, I was like, only one of us is spending our day properly today. Just like, look, I'll be honest. I don't want to sit at 2:00 on a Tuesday in a pool. Right? Like I would rather be getting something done. That's kind of just how I'm built.
00;28;10;26 - 00;28;27;04
Unknown
But I use that example, though, to point out how a rational person looks at the world. A rational person looks at the world like I got my work done. I'm ahead of plan. I want to be in a pool, right? That is a very rational thing to do. But he's done very well in his career, so he's not lazy.
00;28;27;11 - 00;28;46;02
Unknown
I'm like, it would never occur to me that you could do that on a Tuesday of all days. Yeah. My God, I said to him. I was like, I said, you are, you are the nightmare that comes to life for me when I think about my staff not working. Yeah, good. You are. What? My worst fears about work from home look like.
00;28;46;02 - 00;29;02;15
Unknown
Yeah, exactly. You know, I want to circle back on something because you talked about this in the context of, like, our health being the last thing to fall in. Often it is, sometimes it's not. But let's let's stick with that for a second and then the clouding the judgment. So imagine we now get to this point where we've sort of spent all the capital we have.
00;29;02;15 - 00;29;20;08
Unknown
Right? Maybe the money, maybe the money's even there kind of doesn't matter at that point. because you can't buy some of these things back. The relationships aren't there, your mental and emotional health aren't there, and then your physical health starts to fall. And we wonder why we make bad decisions around this. Well, you have now isolated yourself so you don't have people around it because you you burn to relationships.
00;29;20;08 - 00;29;36;19
Unknown
You don't have people who are ready to tell you, like, hey, you should probably think about this journey. You should probably do this. You should probably reconsider right where you're being right now. Your mental and emotional health are so shot that you have lost the plot completely and can't rationalize these things. and then your physical health is failing and you don't know what to do about it.
00;29;36;19 - 00;30;00;02
Unknown
And and it just all starts to compounded pile up on you. So I think, again, it is so important to take stock of these things as early as you can. Try to do something to curb the ambition. When you do realize that there are real costs at play here. I distinctly remember how this was put into perspective for me right after that whole episode where my heart stopped and you came and helped rescue me in a hospital.
00;30;00;04 - 00;30;15;16
Unknown
I had so many things going on at that time. You know, we were launching start ups.com. I still had all those start ups that I had started before, unsubscribe, dot com and all that other stuff. And I am clearly a wreck. I mean, at which point I'm 37 years old and my heart stopping, like, obviously I've gone too far.
00;30;15;22 - 00;30;33;25
Unknown
And I'd been at that point have you or the ambitious person might say, you just hit peak performance without work to your own heart? Congratulations. Yeah, right. Right, right. Don't want to do that again. And so so I'm, you know, I'm 20 years deep on that on that treadmill. I'm at a point where you can't, like, I'm staring at the ceiling of a hospital bed, right?
00;30;33;25 - 00;30;52;05
Unknown
You know, like, yeah, what the hell, man? Right. I'm like, and, you know, my daughter had just been born. I've just gotten married. Like, my life had kind of just started in, like, you know, in that next chapter, and I'm like, what am I doing? I got the best advice I've ever gotten in my life. It was, look, you're doing all of these things because you can, not because you should.
00;30;52;12 - 00;31;12;16
Unknown
And I thought that was for some reason, Ryan, that just flipped a switch for me. And of course, as you know, the wise Yoda that said, that is my wife. And it stuck with me. I was like, wait a minute. It doesn't even occur to me that if I can do something that I wouldn't just do it right, it's I can, therefore I must, I can, therefore I must.
00;31;12;20 - 00;31;37;20
Unknown
It was there mantra, right? Yeah. In how dangerous is that. Right. So here's what I say for all of us, right? Yes. You can do more, you can work more, you can risk more. You can do everything more. Yes you can. That doesn't mean you should, because when you do that calculus, when you run through that gantlet and you say on the other side of it, what will be the cost to getting there?
00;31;37;24 - 00;32;01;22
Unknown
It's way higher than you think. In almost every case, it's not worth 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 bootstrapped founders and the advisors helping them win in the startup Xcom community. Check out the startups.com community@startups.com to see if it's for you.
00;32;01;28 - 00;33;20;05
Unknown
Could be just the thing you need. I hope to see you inside.