Welcome back to another 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, founders love to tell us That they're almost ready.
And I think you and I would agree that almost ready is
where startup dreams go to die.
The only thing that makes us ready is
contact with the market.
So we'll, let's talk about why founders think that getting
more prepared and starting later feels responsible,
but I think you and I would say that's probably just
fear with nice veneers on.
It is, and, and what's interesting to me about
that is we actually believe that we can plan- Yeah
for problems, right?
Yeah.
That, that if we just wait long enough, if we just plan enough,
right, if we get enough, uh, of our ducks in a row, so to
speak- Yes … then we'll be able to avoid the problems.
Which, which brings me to the Mike Tyson quote,
which only you can deliver.
If you would indulge me, on your version of Mike
Tyson's famous quote.
Everybody had a plan till I punched them in the face.
It was better earlier.
You're better.
Oh.
Honestly, when I did that, when I did that a few days
ago in jest- … like, it was better, but now on, on- Yeah.
… on, on, on the spot, like, I feel really bad that I
did… I'm sorry, Mike.
Please don't find me and change my plans or my face.
Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face, which,
you know, mirrors the quote, "No plan survives first contact
with the enemy." It works in the same way, which is, like,
all the planning in the world will not mean jack shit, because
until you get out there and start doing this and take real
lumps with real customers and product and everything else
like that, and investors, you can't plan your way into it.
Yet, yet, but we believe that's
not true.
Yeah, we think so.
Well- Right?
… I mean, look, it comes from an okay place, right?
I think that in so much of life we've been told that you have
to prepare for all these things.
Everything had a prerequisite up until this point.
Then you go to start, right?
Like, you know, before you got the job you wanted, you
had to do the grunt work.
Before you got to any of the grades you wanted,
you had to do… Right?
Everything had, like, some sort of a, a starter set that you
had to complete so that you- Yeah … could level up into.
Right.
But the thing is, in the startup space, readiness is not
a prerequisite for starting.
Readiness- Yeah … is the result of starting.
Readiness is what happens- … sometime after we've started,
often long after we've started, and we're like,
"Okay, I started six years ago.
Now I'm ready.
Now we're ready.
Now it's actually working."
If I think about really where you and I both started, you
know, early in our careers- Yeah … like, you know, very
early in our careers, before we realized that there should've
been maybe something else we, we should have considered, right?
Yeah.
Like, I found out that I had started a business after
I had started a business.
After you had started the business.
Yeah.
And just, like, to give you a sense for, for what ends
up happening, this is like, I'd just turned 19 years old.
Like, so like three years ago.
And so, like, I got into this thing where, um,
I'd built some software.
This is 1993.
I mean, we are going into a frigging time machine here.
Yes, we are.
Um, I'd just built some software on this new
diabolical piece of software called Microsoft Access.
Oh.
On
floppy disk, right?
You were- And so- You were at home programming databases
Yeah, right?
I always learned how relations work
Just not the human kind.
Just- Yeah, exactly Just the
Those do not go together.
I built the software, and I built it for the company
I was working for to be, to do contact management.
And this is going back so far that before we had the
c- this contact management software that, that I was
building, they were just files.
We just had- Yeah
manila folders with, you know, people's information on them.
Every time you called somebody, you just wrote
it on the call sheet.
Anyway, so I build this software, and, and I
roll it out, you know, within our company.
And then one day, I get a call from one of the
companies we were partnered with, and the, the CEO calls
me and says, "Hey, can we get some of that software?"
And I was like, "I could sell it to you." Yeah.
A- and he was like, "Well, fine. Yeah, just, like,
name your price." And guess, Ryan, this was my price.
This was 1993 going into 1994.
My price to license my software
$1500.
Oh.
All of it at once?
That was the all in- Was that, was that payable over time?
Was there a layaway option?
Oh, oh yeah.
Yeah,
uh, it was, like, you'd have to understand where I
was in life at that point.
I was making $5 per hour.
Yeah.
So $1500- Yeah … was like a billion dollars.
Yeah.
And, and I'm 100% sure, uh, when I told that CEO what
the price was, he didn't understand the pricing.
Like- Yeah … he was like, "For what?"
Yeah.
Right?
For, for, per seat?
Per year?
Per what?
What do we mean?
Exactly.
Yeah.
Like, like, and he still didn't understand- Yeah … that I
was actually gonna give him all the software and install it,
'cause everything was custom.
And install,
yeah.
Probably maintain it, teach people how to use it, you know?
Okay, s- right.
So all of a sudden I realize that someone's willing to
pay me to sell them software.
Yes.
And I was like, "I wonder if more people would be
willing to pay me." Yep.
And so that kind of is how I fell into becoming a founder.
See, I didn't, I didn't know I was gonna become a founder.
No.
It wasn't like, "I'm gonna go build software, and then I'll
find somebody that needs it, and then I'll sell it to them,
and then I'll be a found-" no.
It was just like, eh, you just did a thing.
Yeah.
You started something, and it turned into
something else, right?
Which is how it always works anyways.
We just don't usually see it that clearly.
I'm gonna give you another example that's
way more ridiculous, okay?
And absolutely irresponsible, but I'm gonna tie
these two together.
Okay.
Years ago, on Christmas Eve of all time, uh, Sarah, my
wife, and I were down in, uh, in The Bahamas, and I'd always
wanted to go scuba diving.
She was terrified of the water, like, of doing that, so she
was like, "I'll sit on the boat and get a tan- Yeah … while
you figure that out." I'll live
while you go do that.
So g- this is how bad it is, right?
They take us out on the boat, and there's, like, these
three just dudes, right?
That are explaining us to the, the group of us there,
like, how scuba diving works.
Yeah.
And maybe the worst explanation you can possibly imagine.
And, uh, the only thing I remember that they even said
was that if you get in trouble, tap your, uh, your tank.
Uh-huh.
And that's how, you know, it'll make a sound, and
that, that's how people will know you have a problem.
That way we know to head
back to shore really fast before the authorities show up.
Yes.
We'll know the last time we saw you.
And so I jump in with my instructor, and they do the
first thing where you submerge, and then you're trying to
pressurize and whatever.
Yeah.
And I get it wrong, of course my head explodes, right?
I get back up to the top, you know, I re-pressurize,
I go down again.
Well, the next time, time I go down again, I'm fine.
And I just stayed down there for 45 minutes.
Yep.
With no training whatsoever.
Right.
Right?
I just swam to the bottom of the ocean, and just…
It was amazing, actually, right?
Now I say that to say, if you had said, "Will, the
only way that you can scuba dive is that you have to go
through all this training, you have to be in the pool-
Yeah … and everything else," which you should, by the way.
I just wanna Yeah.
I wanna be clear.
If I thought the whole time that I would never be able to
do it unless I went, unless I waited and planned and
did all these things- Yeah
I would've believed that that's true.
There is another version, which I don't recommend to anyone,
where I could also just jump in- Yeah … swim to the bottom of
the ocean, and figure it out.
That version is told by a Will who's not
here to tell that story
today, I think.
That's my twin brother, Phil.
That's the reason you're not telling that story.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
The reason I tell this story is I think people believe that they
can learn to swim by reading and planning about swimming.
Yeah, of course.
Sometimes you just gotta jump in, right?
You gotta
get your feet wet, yeah.
Correct, right?
There's no, no version of, of swimming is, it happens
on, on dry land, right?
And there's a lot that you can do.
And by the way, this isn't life and death, like
submerging yourself in water.
There's a lot that you can do that you don't realize,
and this is where I wanna tie it back together.
When I was 19 years old, and you were damn near, you know,
you were college age too when you were getting started- Yep
I didn't know that there was something to plan for.
There wasn't.
Literally, I, in the same way like I just answered
a question, right?
You built a little software to scratch your own itch, right,
at the time when you were working with that company.
I've told this story before.
I was walking in the halls at OSU, and a previous
upperclassman from a couple grades ahead of me at my, at
my high school bumped into me.
And he's like, "Hey." And then just like, we had a
two-minute conversation.
He goes, "Wait, you know computers, right?" Do you
remember when people used to ask that, when that was
actually a legitimate question?
My grandmother
t- till, till her last day was like, "Will does something
in computers." In computers.
Like, thanks Grandma.
You know computers, right?
And I said- Yep … "Yes." He's like, "Great.
We need a website.
Can you make us one?" I said, "Sure." And then I went to,
you'll appreciate this, Will, I went to Micro Center and
bought probably Frommer's HTML or something, right?
Like, I, I don't remember which one it was.
Uh-huh.
But I bought O'Reilly's somebody.
Bought an HTML book and, like, that weekend I figured
out how to code a site, and by that following Thursday
I had built their website.
But there wasn't like, I wasn't like, "Okay, let
me go get ready." And, and look, I, yes, I read a book,
but the book was just to know how to do the thing.
It wasn't, I wasn't sitting around prevaricating going,
"I wonder if this is really the right time to launch
a web design agency."
Number one, I'd never heard of such a thing,
because I had never heard of such a thing, right?
Uh, fun fact, I got a text message from Micro Center not
two hours ago about the Memorial Day sale that's still going on.
And for all you nerds in the audience, some of you know
Micro Center because they've got a regional presence in
places, but Micro Center is the old school, still exists
version of independently owned computer store, where you go in
there and the people there are very much the kind of people
you would, it's the people that would've been working at
RadioShack back in the day.
Ryan, whenever I get to go there, and I get to go
there, like, once a year because I need something
very specific, I'm like, I have so many warm memories.
And the best part about this, every time I check
out and I give them my phone number, they always ask you,
"Are you still at 171 West Maynard Avenue on campus?"
I'm like, "Yes, I am." Yes, I am.
Yes, I am.
Um- 40 years later … besides, it's been a while.
But anyway, I think what's interesting about that is if
someone had told you- Here's what you need to do before
you're allowed to do this," you would believe them. I
would've. And I think we tell ourselves that, "I need to get
all these, these ducks in a row.
I need to w- Yeah.
What about, what about your branding?
Have you thought about how much time this is gonna take?
You know, have you, have you, have you- Right … launched
your… Do you have a, a charter of accounts?
Have you… Are you gonna go LLC or S corp?
What are you gonna do?
Yep.
Like, all of these things that could've gotten in the way,
and some of those th- become necessary at some point, sure,
once you figure out if any of this works at any level, right?
Had I gone and done all of that stuff and then figured
out I actually couldn't code a website, that would've been kind
of a waste of time, wouldn't it?
I mean, but you figured out… Tha- and I think that's the
part that folks are missing.
So I, I think part of what concerns me when people say, "Is
now the right time to start?"
We get aw- asked an awful lot about this.
Yes.
My answer is always, "No, you're wrong."
Mm-hmm.
The right time should've start- would mean you already started.
Yeah.
If you're asking the question, you're already too late.
Yeah.
That doesn't mean you can't get started tomorrow, but
that's sort of the point.
But I think, like, waiting is basically stalling, right?
I think that- Yeah … when people are, are trying to plan
for what, you know, what could happen and like, "Oh, you know,
we just wanna have this perfect, you know, plan to get started,"
it's a massive step backward.
I don't think people understand the cost of
waiting in this game.
I don't think so either, and as we were talking about this,
I was starting to realize there's more of a cost to
it than I had even maybe previously associated, which
is that, like, every day lost is a day lost or whatever.
Y- yes, but it's not just that, and it's like, yeah, if, you
know, starting today is better than starting tomorrow, yes,
but, like, each day that you don't start is, is not just
you didn't start, it's the loss of everything that would've
happened in that period.
Yeah.
So there's actually this negative compounding
effect for the, the longer that you wait, and- Yeah
and you've got plenty of reasons and excuses and all this stuff.
Planning is great, and, and you should plan a little, right?
Like, I planned to go get a book, and then I planned to
build a test site, and then I planned to build their site.
That was okay, but, but planning in that case was
valuable because those plans specifically led to action.
If plans don't lead to action- Right … it's
just theater, right?
And, and we don't need that.
Yeah.
We just don't need that.
We do teach a lot of planning at startups.com, right?
Sure.
Just to be clear, like, you know, we teach people h-
doing o- idea validation.
We teach them, you know, how to- Yes … uh, plan to go do
a capital raise, et cetera, but that's a little bit different.
That's the act of doing.
Yes.
Right?
While planning.
Yes.
It is, I'm building websites for clients while I'm figuring out
what it means to build an agency to build websites for clients.
Yes.
Right?
Like, I'm learning by doing, and that's the part that
I don't, I don't think folks fully appreciate
in this particular job.
I think a lot of people are like, "Hey, for every
other job, you have to get education, degree, whatever
in order- Right … to go do it." This isn't that job.
There isn't a parallel.
There isn't a parallel where you have to wait and learn
and prepare to do this job.
You prepare to do this job by doing this job Right.
It's very specific.
Let me draw a line here, 'cause I, I think there's
an important thing here.
Uh, you said, you said something great there, which
is, like, around, like, we're, we're getting people
to do stuff, and we're, we're having people planning.
I wanna draw a line here, though, because there's still,
like, you can still stall and look and feel productive
because there are documents, there are meetings, there are
research, there's strategy.
But nothing is being tested.
Nothing is being tested.
Stuff is being done, but nothing's being tested,
nothing's being proven, right?
I think- Right … actually starting something, but I
mean, like, getting in front of customers, talking to the
actual people you wanna sell to, talking to people you
wanna solve the problems for.
That type of launch forces response.
Right.
Response starts to create learning, and learning is where
the actual progress comes in.
So I think that we can be doing, even… So even if you have a,
an action bias and you're like, "Oh, no, no, I'm not stalling
at all. I am doing so many things right now." Okay, cool.
What have you learned?
"Well, I learned how to put together a
chart of accounts." No.
That's cool if what you wanna become is an accountant.
Not cool- … if what you wanted to become was a founder, right?
Again, like, it has a place, but it's not what we're trying
to, to force function here.
I also wanna point out, and I don't think folks really
appreciate this, there is a massive cost to waiting.
I think folks think, "Well, if I wait, that's okay
because I'm building up this other resource." That
resource is education, network connections, capital, et cetera.
And all of that sounds like it would make sense, but what you
don't understand is w- the time you're taking to do that has a
direct cost- Yes … to the time you're not getting shit done.
Here's the one thing that I didn't appreciate early
in my career, 'cause I just hadn't seen it yet.
I didn't understand how important it was, going
back to your Mike Tyson, to get punched in the face,
meaning, like, like, to fail, until I actually did it.
So I'll give you an example.
Early in my career, I'll never forget this, and this
is a character you know that, that we've worked
with for a long time.
Uh, early in my career, I go and I'm pitching one of
our first clients, right?
Mm-hmm.
It was Harrison House, if, if you remember, like,
like, ba- back in the day.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And so anyway, I'm pitching the client, and they need a
website and all these things.
One of my good friends, uh, you know, g- guy you know
well from college, uh, is standing there right with me.
And as I'm giving the pitch, the client is, "Well, can, can you
do an e-commerce site?" Right?
And I was like, "Absolutely." And as I was saying
that- … almost, like, on cue like a Seinfeld episode,
he's like, "Absolutely not."
And I looked at him and I was like… And he
was just being honest.
He was like, "Well, yeah, no, we've actually
never done that before."
Yeah.
Right?
And I was like, "Bro." Yeah.
And I remember walking out of the meeting and being
like, "You don't get speaking lines anymore." Yeah, yeah.
Like, "You're not allowed to talk in meetings."
And he's like, "What?
What did I say?" Like- "You have mime makeup
at home?
Because you're wearing it the next few-" Yeah, exactly.
I was
like… It was so like… He was like, "What did I
do?" I was like, "You're not allowed to say no-
Yeah.
"… to a client." And I remember he was so blown away by that.
But here's, here's why it was a lesson for me.
I learned that lesson when he said no.
Yeah.
Right?
Yeah.
It never occurred to me to say no.
Yeah.
And I didn't realize how important it was
to know that- Yes
until I watched someone do it- Someone do it … like
a crash test dummy.
Yeah.
And then I was like, "Jesus, I need to never do what that guy
just did." And I watched the look on the client's face, the
sense of like disappointment and almost shock- Uh-huh.
Yeah … that he was being so honest.
Yes.
Now, we would end up getting that account, and
we would end up building exactly what they needed.
E-commerce.
We just figured it out.
Yes.
But had I not been out there getting that experience, like
being able to see it firsthand, in this case again kind of at
his expense, I would've never learned that lesson, right?
Which wound up paying massive dividends-
Yes
… throughout my career- Yep … in learning how to deal with, "Hey,
we don't have that capability."
Yeah.
"But it doesn't mean we couldn't." 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 day long at 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.
Stick with us for just a second.
Let's play this out in a different way.
Now imagine instead of just being in that conversation with
this mutual friend of ours, imagine you were sitting back
at the office whiteboarding, going, "All right, so how should
we handle client communications?
What should we say?
What shouldn't we?
Let's make up some rules around- Yep
how we handle stuff." Yep, yep, yep, yep.
Will you ever get this right?
No.
You learn more from one ugly customer interaction than from
50- Like 40 years … internal strategy sessions, right?
Every single time.
Actually, stick with that
' cause, 'cause I, I think we can pull a lot more out
of, out of that example.
Had we been in the whiteboard session and we were to
say, "Hey, should we offer e-commerce to clients?"
Yeah.
Our friend would've vehemently been like,
"No, we can't do it." No.
Yeah, we can't.
"It, we should never bring it up- Yeah. "… because a client
will never go for it." Right?
Now, now stick with this for a second because I
think this is fascinating.
He would genuinely believe, and have full reason to
believe, that no client would say yes and that we could
not provide that service.
Yeah.
And if we limited the scope of our experience to the
scope of that room- The answer would've been no.
The answer would've been no, right?
Like very, very vehemently as I said, right?
Yes.
And, and I couldn't argue otherwise.
Until you just go do it, until you just go out there and you
say to the client, "Hey, yeah, we can absolutely do it,"
and the client goes, "Cool."
And all the planning you would've held out for, right?
Yes.
This, we'll have to go higher for this and build that
expertise, et cetera, just went out the frigging door
because you said one word: sure.
Like- Yep … that was
it.
Oops.
Yeah.
It's amazing.
This is the cost of inaction, right?
Yeah, the cost of inaction.
Or this is the cost of, of planning versus doing, right?
Like- Right … have you, have I, have any founders
ever discovered anything about their capacity by preparing?
Or did we discover- Nope … it all by being
forced to perform, right?
I never learned that I was capable of something I didn't
think I was capable of while I was sitting around wondering
if I was capable of it, right?
Yep.
It happened when I was out there going, "Shit, I probably
can't catch that guy, but it's, you know, minute 89,
I'm gonna try. I'm gonna run him down." And I did, right?
Yep.
Sometimes I didn't, and that's okay, but, like, if
I had just thought about it, guess what would've happened?
I certainly wouldn't have caught the guy.
This past weekend, uh, I had a contractor out at, you know,
the new house that I'm building.
Wait, new house?
You just gave me PTSD.
You mean the old house that you've been building, right?
That's, that's a frigging vintage.
Yeah.
Um, and as we're walking around it, I'm explaining to
him all the different systems of the house, and I've given
you this tour a million times.
Like, you know, I'm like, "Hey, this is how the
electrical systems work and the geothermal systems work,
and, you know, this is h- how I architected this and
whatever." I can give this
tour.
Right.
Yeah, exactly.
And so at some point he, he says to me, he's like, "How did
you learn all of this?" Uh-huh.
Right?
Uh, like, "How did you learn how to do the electrical
system or lay out geothermal or build cabinetry or whatever?"
Yeah.
I was like, "It's easy. I just did it." See the burn
on this hand?
You see the cut over here, right?
And I wasn't being flippant.
I was like- No … the reason I know how all of this stuff works
is because I actually did it.
I didn't say to myself, "Oh, well, I can't possibly
design an electrical system for a full house, right?
So I guess I just can't do it." Uh-huh.
I'm like, "Of course I can do it." Yeah.
Now, doesn't mean I know how to.
Right.
But I can learn.
It's the same way I feel about entrepreneurship.
The reason I know how to do so many aspects of this founder
world is 'cause I just did them.
Do them.
Yeah.
Right?
I- if you were to zoom out and you were to take a look at
our depth of expertise across so many disciplines- Yeah
right?
Yeah.
So I- I'm gonna take it across the spectrum, and just so folks
understand, you know, that are thinking about getting
into this, first understand how deep our expertise
is across so many things.
So we have expertise, like actual usable market
expertise, in marketing, in finance, in fundraising,
in product development, in engineering, in sales, in
like all of these things.
We've done these, like professionally at like a, a- Yes
… pretty significant level, right?
Now, you might look at that and say, "Well, yeah, but
how did you learn all of those?" I took zero classes,
and I'm pretty much sure you're in the same boat.
Yeah.
Well, I took a couple classes.
I'm not sure they aligned with anything I actually
learned, but yeah.
You know, the best classes I took, the one class that I
took that was game changing for me- was Econ 101.
Yeah.
Great class.
I'll never forget, when I got into econ, and I say
this because I, I'm saying, like, it's, it's amazing
at how sometimes there's just an unlock moment.
Yeah, yeah.
You just start to see something in a way you
didn't see it before.
You go, "Oh, okay. Yes." I just saw the
Matrix.
Like, I got this Econ 101, this dry, awful book.
And I remember reading about supply and demand for the first
time, and I remember, uh, do you remember the concept of utility?
Oh, yes.
Like, the amount of value, like- Yep … like, goes down
as you have more of it, right?
The amount of utility you get.
And the example they always use is, is a pizza.
Yep.
The first p- slice of pizza has maximum utility, and then
the value of each additional slice goes down exponentially.
Um, and- Until the next
morning, and then you find- I was gonna say- … that
last leftover slice, the utility on that one's pretty
damn high, to be honest
the way I
feel about vodka.
And so anyway, point is it was one of those things where
that education, like that unlock, it was, felt more like
a gateway, made me go, "Wait a minute, so, like, the market
has a lot of demand and not enough supply?" And it sounds
stupid when I'm saying it now.
Yeah.
But 18-year-old Will- Uh-huh
his head was exploding.
Yeah.
I was like, "Wait, so I could, like, supply more
stuff and people will give me money for it," right?
Yeah.
And I was like,
" Done." My dreams have all come true.
Right, right.
And so, but what was interesting was that I was a theater major.
I clearly had, like, I did not go to school, like,
as a, as a business major.
Yeah.
How'd you- Like, I thought I was gonna go make movies or
something, which would've been really cool … turn the wrong
way on campus one day?
How'd you end up in an econ class?
Yeah,
exactly, right?
And so anyway, my point is I think we have this idea that
there's this schooling, like, all this prep that gets into it.
Yeah.
But the reason that you and I have such a significant amount
of practicing domain knowledge in completely different
careers- Yes … right, is because we actually did them.
We didn't say, "Oh, well, I'm, I'm marketing, guys,
so I guess I couldn't possibly code anything."
Yeah, yep.
Right?
Like- Could- don't need to understand finance at all
because numbers, you know?
Like…
Right, right.
Yeah.
Like, what fascinates me, and this is really what I,
what I wanna dig in on for a second, is how extensible we
are as humans, push ourselves or allow ourselves to be.
Okay?
So let me, let me, let me build on that a little bit more.
So imagine here I am 19-year-old Will, and at
that time I have no skills whatsoever, or so I think.
I don't have any learned skills.
My market rate was $5 an hour, right?
So it's not the market was rewarding me for anything.
But it turned out that there was a ton of stuff that I was
good at- But I hadn't tried.
Yeah.
I- this always fascinates me, by the way, 'cause
I'm like, what if I am a world-class concert pianist,
but I've never been given the opportunity to find out?
Yeah.
Like, like, don't you find it's kind of convenient
that the people that go on to become, like, these,
these world-class whatever- Yeah … often are groomed
from families that did- Yes … specifically that, right?
Yeah.
Like, come on, right?
Like- As if they have the corner on the market for
growing pianists, right?
Like, come on.
Yeah, that's what I'm saying,
right?
Don't you find that, like, a, a little bit coincidental?
Definitely.
Which, which implies that that resident experience and talent
can exist in any of us if we allow ourselves to unlock it.
So fast-forward five, six years later, and now I'm
running a pretty large company.
Yeah.
Right?
And I remember thinking to myself, "How did this happen?"
Yeah.
Right?
I mean, like, like how was it that with no training, with no
experience, with no anything, I was able to excel at this level?
And here's the answer: because I just did it.
You did it.
Yeah.
Right?
And that sounds trite, but that actually is the answer.
Like, the reason I was able to, to be a CEO and all these things
at a young age is 'cause I was willing to just do it and not
sit around thinking about it.
You know what I mean?
Yeah.
There was this quote, and I, and look, I am always careful
with these things because they can be misleading.
Are you gonna do it in a voice?
I wasn't going to.
Now maybe I shall.
Let me think about it.
I'm not gonna remember it exactly.
It was essentially the, the world stands aside for they
who know where they're going.
But as founders, we don't always necessarily know where we're
going, but more importantly, the world stands aside when
people start going, right?
When you start moving.
Yep.
When you start moving, people start to get out of the way.
Things start to congeal around you.
Things start to happen.
Things start to mold to what you're trying to make happen,
as opposed to when you're just sitting still, just thinking,
just planning, lots is changing, but nothing is changing around
you necessarily, and I think that's, that's really important.
A- and I wanna back up for a second 'cause I love this,
this last d- part of the discussion around this massive
amount of domain expertise we have, and it is true, and
I like, I, it's crazy to get into a group of founders.
Like, get seven or eight founders in a room and,
like, I dare you to find something that nobody's done
or hasn't tried or doesn't understand something about.
You can have a conversation about damn near anything
you want at a pretty- Right … high level.
But I think it's important for us to go, but it wasn't
always like that, and it certainly wasn't like that
when we started, right?
And I think that's the important part here.
The reason that that is true isn't because we're a bunch of
know-it-all polymaths, right?
It was because we didn't know stuff, but we didn't let that
stop us, and by not stopping, now we know stuff, right?
Yep.
So the knowing stuff is the by-product of the doing.
It isn't that we were able to do because we knew a bunch of shit.
We didn't… I knew shit when I started.
I knew jack shit when I started.
L-
let's unpack that some more.
Yeah.
Because the only way to learn is to fail.
Yes.
And planning is typically trying to avoid failure,
which sounds wonderful.
Isn't that funny?
It sounds wonderful, right?
It does.
It doesn't work- Yeah … but it sounds wonderful, right?
Yeah.
It sounds like something you would want to do
and you'd want to avoid.
Now, we spend time, you and I, planning all the time.
Yes.
But here's the difference.
We plan with failure as part of the method.
Yes.
We launch a landing page series, and we're like,
there's no version we're like, "Oh, my God. We got to plan
to make sure it's perfect."
Uh-huh.
We do our best.
Yep.
Right?
But we know that it's going to fail, but
we're okay with it- Yep
because, um, we'd prefer it didn't, but we understand when
it does, that helps direct
us, okay?
Now we know what to do.
Before that, it's purely a theoretical exercise.
Correct.
If I'm sitting around, you and I can beat up a landing page path.
Yep.
We can beat it up, and we can go, okay, as much sense as we
can make out of it right now, and luckily, we get to that
pretty quickly at this point.
But you can spend lots- Yep … of time doing that.
The reality is it's all theoretical.
It is all theoretical up until that point,
until you release it.
Then once you start to see where it fails, now you
know exactly what to fix.
Right, right.
It's like building a sandcastle at the beach, right?
You don't know which part of the wall to reinforce until the
waves start to crash, and then you're like, "Okay, we got to…
More sand here, Jack.
More sand there, Hannah," right?
You have to start to plug the holes, but you can't see
the holes during planning.
The holes appear during actual market action.
I would also argue that planning is a weak way to learn.
And now, this isn't an- Yeah … anti-planning ra- rant.
Or anti-learning,
yeah.
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
This is more about you can't plan your way
into the launch, right?
No.
Yes, by all means, do some planning.
But when you're not launching, every day that goes by where
you are not in the market- Learning from failure.
And that failure comes in so many forms.
It's comes in how, how the market reacts to your
product, how investors react to your pitch- Yeah
how staff reacts to your shitty leadership style.
Yeah.
Right?
Like, all of these things, right?
Yep.
These are all the things you need.
These aren't the things that you're trying to avoid.
No.
Now, of course, like, you, it'd be great if you just
built the perfect product and ev- investor said yes
and everybody that works with you loves you, but that's
just not the way this works.
And frankly, the only way you get to the point where
those things start to click is by failure, right?
Yeah.
And people hate that, because we are fundamentally conditioned
to avoid failure, right?
Like, you have to get an A on the test the first time- Yeah
… or you don't get the grade.
Right.
See, if we took tests, like, you know, if we were grown up, if
you will, through the academic system the way you're supposed
to be grown up as a founder, we wouldn't study at all.
Nope.
You would take the test, you would fail miserably,
you would learn from what grades you didn't get right,
and you'd take it again.
Yeah.
And you'd fail miserably again, and you'd keep taking
it until you understood.
Boy, that certainly sound dangerously like fairly accurate
and useful educational reform.
Well…
Yeah, I, I know.
Imagine that.
Let's stay away from that.
The idea is because you only get one shot at it, your
studying and your preparation- Yeah … are the ke- the
essential ingredient, right?
Yeah,
yeah.
But startups don't work that way.
No, they don't.
It's also a case where you don't know what the right answer is.
You can't study for it.
Dude, the failure is… It's so hard, 'cause we watch
founders do this all the time.
They try to avoid failure.
They pause.
They're like, "We're gonna… more, one more feature, one
more twist, one more that, one more whatever." Yep.
And you and I are sitting there going, avoiding failure is
literally trying to avoid the very mechanism that creates the
answer to this question, right?
This is where the answer comes from.
And I think, man, the, the more time goes by, the more
I, I, I see it clearly.
Like, the founders who we see doing the best, that
is a subjective thing, but the ones that we see moving
fastest, moving smoothest, like, just actually getting
stuff done, building great businesses, aren't the ones
who are failing less at all.
They're the ones who are metabolizing
failure faster, right?
Yeah.
They are able to just go out, repeat.
I'm looking at more as, like, fault tolerance than failure.
Failure is pretty specific, and it means that it didn't
work at all in a lot of cases.
Sometimes that is true, but more often what we're dealing with
is just fault tolerance, right?
Which is like, okay, that didn't do as much of what we want it to
do, or that didn't work as fast as we wanted, we didn't make
as much money, or that didn't solve the problem in the way
that the- the- the user wanted.
Most of the time it's not truly failure, it's just,
it's not adequately reaching the mark that we want it
to, which I guess could be couched as failure.
But I don't know.
I'm trying to put a nicer spin on it so people not to feel
like they have to fail, because apparently there is resistance
to failure, so I'm just trying to take that off the table.
Think of how many aspects of our lives where, that have
conditioned us to avoid failure.
For example, again- Pretty much all
the rest of them … we'll go back to academics, right?
E- exactly.
Academics are not conditioned around try as many times as
you can in different versions.
Yeah.
And only by trying will you get an A, right?
In o- in other words, only by experimenting will you get an
A. Like, in this case it's no, if you remember this specific
answer and you recite it at this specific time, you win.
Yeah.
It's just that simple.
And if, if you follow that formula, you win every time.
This doesn't have that formula.
Right.
Or let's take it to a job.
You go get employed for a job.
There's no version where they're like, "Hey, junior doctor, just
experiment around a little.
Cut some stuff up.
See, see who dies, see who lives, and like, you know, kind
of see if you can figure out
who should stay and who should get cut."
That is sort of how
medicine started, but yes.
Yeah, well, yeah.
It's how medicine's still running.
As kids, when we're, we're growing up with parents, it's
the moment you do something wrong, it's slap on the hand,
you know, metaphorically, and you're just constantly,
like, gun-shy about doing something wrong- Yeah, yeah
because you're constantly penalized for doing anything
but what's right And then all of a sudden, for the first
time, someone's like, "None of what you learn, none of your
construct applies here," and you just don't believe it.
You're like, "Wait, I can just do whatever I want at
my own pace, and if it goes wrong, I'll learn more?"
Yes.
Okay, that makes no sense whatsoever, right?
Yes, because everything you've learned- Yeah … has
been pointed toward a different construct, and
here's the difference.
Up until now, everything that you've tried to do, whether it
was grow up as a human, whether it was get a job, whether it
was go through academia, et cetera, had a right answer.
This does not have a right answer.
The right answer has to be discovered through failure.
You have to make enough bad product decisions to find
out what the good one is.
You have to make enough bad investor pitches to find out
what the right, uh, model is.
You have to hire enough of the wrong people- Yep
to find out who the right people are.
Yep.
Right?
Like, it would be so cool if you could just go through life
and only make good decisions because you planned so well.
The way you know that your spouse is the right one
for you is because you had so many shitty spouses
or partners before that, and you're like, "Damn."
One last anecdote.
I had three girlfriends before my wife, not at the same time.
And in each case, right, like- Good distinction.
Good distinction … I had long-term girlfriends.
Yeah, yeah.
Like, they went okay.
I'm like a pretty easygoing guy, but like, but there
was always some issue.
And so I always assumed that in a relationship, you just
argue all the time, right?
I just assume, like, people get shitty and, like,
snippy or whatever, right?
So in my mind, because that's the only experience
I had, I assume that's how relationships work.
And then I met my wife, and we don't ever argue.
Uh-huh.
Like, it doesn't even occur to me.
Like, if my wife said something crass to me, not like in a
joking way, but like, like actually meant it- Yeah
I would be so fundamentally confused.
Right?
And we've been together for 20 years- Yeah … so
it's not like, you know, this is a new thing.
Yeah, it's not like the opportunity hasn't arisen.
Yeah, ex- oh my God, right, and we're both
very Type A personalities.
So it, it's not like either of us are, are coy
about our feelings, right?
Yeah, yeah.
But what I'm saying is, until you get out there and you meet
enough spouses, this could, uh, this is about people
really, co-founders- Could be co-founders, could be, yep
… could be coworkers- Yep … and partners and whatever, you don't
really understand that you kinda gotta crack a bunch of eggs-
Yeah
… you know, break a bunch of eggs, before you find the
one that you're looking for.
Yep.
Right?
And I think people are terrified of that notion.
"No, I just wanna find exactly the right person."
Yeah.
Good luck with that.
It's so funny because that attitude, that mentality, is
actually what almost guarantees you, you won't find what you're,
you're looking for, right?
At some point- Right … you have to realize that the
failure is the structural steel that becomes the scaffolding
for, like, everything that we build from that point forward.
You gotta get, you gotta know those things.
That's what sets the limits.
That's what sets the tolerances.
That's what sets the, the, the min and the max.
And then you can actually start to understand how you
operate within that system.
And until then, you're, you're just guessing.
I think science tells us exactly how good we
are at guessing, right?
We're gonna get it right less than half the time.
Which is fine.
Here's where I would say, I, I'm kinda tongue
in cheek saying this.
Here's where I really want people to wait and
plan as long as possible.
When they're my competition.
I want my competition- Oh, yeah.
… to spend as much time on the whiteboard- We love it.
Yes … as much time getting their degree, as much time
as, as they can making sure all their ducks are in a
row before they launch.
Yeah.
Please, competition- Yes … keep doing that.
Because while you're doing that, I'm gonna be actually building.
I'm gonna be getting the customers you're
just talking about- Yeah
on a whiteboard, right?
I'm gonna be raising the capital, I'm gonna
be recruiting the team.
We're gonna be out here turning signal into revenue
while you guys are polishing degrees and theories.
Fantastic.
Yeah, yeah.
Good luck with that, right?
And the reason I say that is you don't wanna be my competition
in this scenario, right?
Yeah.
Like, you don't wanna be the person that's sitting on
the sideline contemplating- … while the actual person
who's gonna make this happen is- Yeah … out there
making it happen, right?
It like, again, this goes back to the cost of waiting.
Yeah.
The cost of waiting is, is to be the person
that got sidelined- Yes.
Yeah
… by the person that didn't sit around waiting.
I mean, it's, it's significant, you know?
Yeah.
No, it's, it's absolutely true.
No, like, it really does.
Like, it, startups don't reward planning in that way, right?
They don't reward- At all … preparation.
They reward- Right … action.
They reward motion.
Now, motion without any planning, without any thought,
without any idea, like you're just kicking up dust.
When the dust settles- Yeah … if nothing's changed,
then also nothing happens.
So y- sure.
Sure.
But I think, you know, if I have to pick one end of the
spectrum that I'm gonna lean towards, there's, there's
somebody who's out there doing stuff, and there's the other
person, you're asking, "What have you launched so far?"
And they're like, "Lots of finger tents," right?
Lots of pinning.
Great.
Okay, cool.
How's that going?
Yeah, yeah.
We're not an industry of planners.
And again- No … this isn't anti-planning.
Just, just to be clear, just to, to, to give you a sense
for, like we own bizplan.com that we've run for 20 years.
It's literally a business planning tool that we built-
Yep countless copies of, right?
Clearly we think that there's something to planning, but
not at the expense of action.
Right.
Planning never happens at the expense of action.
Planning is something that is supported-
Should create action.
It should create action.
You should plan enough to know what to do next, and you should
not plan any further than that.
Correct.
And, and I think the reason this should be a massive sigh
of relief for so many founders is because they're saying
they're going, "Well, if I just get to this point, again,
if I get the degree, if I get the cash, you know, once I get
married," you know, you name it.
Whatever this, this made up milestone is, here's the
great news: It doesn't matter.
Yeah.
It doesn't make a lick of difference.
None of those milestones, no matter how much you think
otherwise, are gonna make a lick of difference, and none
of them even remotely compare to actually taking action.
So I think if, if folks in the audience are thinking,
they're on the fence, right?
You know, "Maybe I should wait a little bit longer."
The biggest mistake you can make right now is
waiting one more day.
Because you jump in tomorrow, you start taking action, you
start learning, start learning faster than your competition,
that's what's gonna drive your company, not sitting
around and planning for it.
For all of us that are, that are sitting around and
planning, we become the losers, and later is for losers.
If you wanna win, get in the game, get in right now.
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.
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