when mo was selling native deodorant he didn't own the trademark and it was an issue he's got the deal done and they're like wait you don't have the trademark he's like yeah but there's no other native deodorant he's they're like okay junior what are you talking about that's not how this works you know i feel like i could rule where to i know i could be what i want to from at all in it like a days off on road today we thought it'd i'd be fun to do a episode all about how we actually run our companies so we've been running companies for like i don't know ten fifteen years now and like many people out there at the beginning we did a bunch of dumb stuff and so we're gonna admit and confess to some of the dumbest things that we did running our companies and then talk about what we do now that's actually like we found that work so the stuff that didn't work and the stuff that works and this is around you know everything from like you know mission statements how we used to think that these are like super important and how we treated them versus what we do now or branding and naming our companies or goal setting these are kinda like the shortcuts that we use now so what what actually that we found works through the painful process of making embarrassing mistakes that's what i think we're gonna do today yeah we gotta be like five or eight categories of like on hiring on creating comp plans on having boundaries with stuff they actually sound like boring when we're like just and when i'm just reading that off but i promise you it's actually we have like interesting stories behind each one and stuff we wish we would have done earlier that i deeply regret that i didn't do now or that i didn't do then but yeah we'll we'll go through all the stuff that we actually use on a day to day basis to run our companies the touchy feely stuff is actually really important so i thought it'd be fun for us to share shit we do when we run our companies what are our almost like management hacks or shortcuts are like the methods that we use which as a disclaimer probably not the best so probably not what they teach you at harvard business school or what you know like very polished you know seasoned executives would do i remember when i started one of my early companies it was my in my internal mission statement was to hire ten thousand people and and then i hired like two people and i was like shit does it get new eraser yeah yeah like how do i make this ten it was horrible and then it was like and then the mission statement from the employees is like look like we're gonna change whatever like right now the word is democrat we're democrat the financial markets or whatever it's like yeah my god whatever that okay moment is what i said like we're gonna change the world one newsletter out a time and so my mission statement did you really say that no but it was probably like as lame i don't do the words if i said that but no they're pretty now they're way more so here's what i tell people i go here's my the mission for the business this first one it's very selfish which is i wanna work on cool shit with cool people and have a dope life yeah that's just what i tell people i go so it's very selfish i just wanna work with cool people on interesting things and that's more so the mission than anything and then it's like and if we are able to do this this and this that will also be cool right versus so far more grand thing my mission statements aren't nearly as grand are yours i am in the exact same bucket so definitely used to be like changing the status quo you know on my steve jobs shit and you know i because that's what he looked up to looked up steve jobs i looked up to elon musk and he's like you know created inter species it's like oh okay cool what's my version of that like i'm i'm not trying to get to mars and like make humankind you know inter but i was trying to do that but you remember that story of steve jobs so we trying to recruit the guy from pepsi and steve jobs is like you're just gonna sell sugar water for the rest of your life right fuck you steve what a dick now we're like logan paul genius do put sugar in water sells it to children dude the audacity so i'm like you now i hear it was here's the notes i wrote on my answer for this my on my little cheat i wrote i don't kid myself anymore i'm honest i'm building a lifestyle business for me and my team almost exactly what you just said which is i wanna do dope shit with cool people right so do cool shit with cool people and in a way that leads to an awesome lifestyle meaning i'm not trying to kill myself currently running the business and i'm trying to have a financial outcome for me and my team that lets us all elevate our lifestyles right like that's that is the this business is a vehicle to have an enjoyable lifestyle which is really funny because in silicon valley lifestyle business is the it's the equivalent of saying no offense to start a sentence it's like lifestyle business is how vcs patch you on the head and say that's cute oh oh but million of revenue that that's cute you know you know we we we don't invest a lifestyle businesses right if this is just a lifestyle business for we're not interested right your your low ambition which in silicon valley is where i live is low status however for me i feel like i broke out of the matrix and was like wait what the fuck are all these people talking about the point of life is to have a great lifestyle what i don't want another i don't wanna do something else with my life i'm not trying to have a bad life i'm trying to have a good life for me for my family for my team we all want the good life okay let's do a project that's fun and interesting with fun and interesting people in a way that we all get rich is that so much to ask it's so like that is now the blanket mission statement on all of my projects and i don't know if that's inspiring to the troops but it's inspiring to me and i hope that it just attracts people who are down with that and i'm not looking for the the ra ra you know say think i think that is a bit inspiring to be honest to like the right type of person and i i i at least when i talk to people it seems like yeah that sounds wonderful another thing that changed with me is when i start new companies i pick business models where i can afford to pay hires a lot of money because i remember when i was studying a lot of my stuff i'm like man i don't i can only i i don't have enough money to pay a high quality person a lot of money i it's a trap yeah i'm like i wish i could afford to pay someone three or two hundred thousand dollars a year so i could recruit a certain type of person so i could spend time with them and so that has changed as well well like what's an example so like the hustle traditionally you know media companies when they start obviously they don't make a ton of revenue you're you're putting out free content so and writers are typically not that well paid however like so would that count as it was more in the towards the bad end of the spectrum or was it on the good end because you did hire people like steph smith and trunk and i great people eventually yeah i hired great people eventually but like for example a good media like you could you could run your media company a few different ways you could particularly for sellers for ad salespeople people you could pay them sixty grand a year and say they have a code of only four hundred thousand dollars and they get they make a hundred and five grand when they hit their on target earnings or you could go hire someone who you're gonna pay two hundred thousand dollar base plus a higher commission and their expectation is that they're gonna sell two or three million dollars with a stuff and typically those people who are more competent and capable i find are more enjoyable to be around and so like things like that where i'm building a business that hires less people who i pay more because that setup i think is more enjoyable so i had the same problem because my first business was in the restaurant industry and the restaurant industry is basically like you know what is what what is the worst type of business you could you could select i think it's probably i don't know if it's the worst but it's down there it's hanging out with the worst whatever it is right so i'm just saying business model right business model is almost all of them fail even when they succeed they have like ten percent net margins typically and you gotta open up like multiple locations to get to ever make it big or have enough cash flow from a business like that to hire high quality like you know highly seasoned people and so i remember meeting the guy who ran chipotle i think he was a ceo or ceo of chipotle at the time and we were trying to create the chipotle of sushi and i was like alright you know like give me your advice i don't even know what a question to asked but was give me your advice and he's like well think of it this way your entire product is in the hands of somebody who makes nine dollars an hour and doesn't wanna be there and again every customer everything you're telling me right now about how great the user experience is gonna be that's true for restaurant one it might be true for restaurants two and three by restaurant four it's no longer true because you're not there anymore to do the all those amazing things and give that amazing user experience he goes the trick in this business is whoever can figure out how to get minimum wage employees to give somebody a good experience they you get you get to win that's the winning condition he goes so you know for like chipotle we ended up doing a bunch of things to try it try to improve that he's like you i don't know if we did it fully but like they did a couple things like for example if anybody if you're a manager at chipotle and anyone you manage becomes a manager of a restaurant you get ten thousand dollars whether you work at that company or not just like ever because like you had a hand and oh that's and leading that person to be to i don't know they still do this at the time they did they also changed the title so like the manager was called like restaurant tour or something like that and they paid them above market and they're like you know we're doing all these things to try to fix it starbucks did the same thing giving people benefits so that they stick around and actually stick with the job versus really high churn but nobody's really figured that out point is i remember it what just wasn't a lot of fun to be in that business because i couldn't relate you know all the things i love i'm an entrepreneur thinking about ideas or you know raising capital i got big goals big dreams and i'm coming into work every day with somebody who's goal and dream is to get off work early that is the like there that would be the the best thing that could happen to happen to them at work that day and i was like shit that's not that inspiring every day to like kind of and i i don't mean that's an knock but it's just the truth it's like you you're gonna hang around certain people when you run a business ideally you would be around people who are very very like minded to you in the sense of they share similar values or goals and aspirations and then it becomes contagious and then they're sharing learnings with you and like i remember we interviewed i remember interview people for like this position because we kept having people flake out they would just leave or they would steal or stuff like that and like my buddy who was interviewing he goes well i like this person they had all their teeth i was like what and he's like i don't know i like i'm i'm just looking it for symbols i just he's like last three people stole from us and that sucked i just want somebody who's not gonna steal from us like that's my news bar first and like after that i could figure out higher higher level requirements and so did you see on did you see on the tv show bear where they hire this you know this guy and on the first day they catch him outside smoking crack and they're like i think i need to fire you but i i should go but i should go ask and he's like yes chef fire him yet and by the way there's one lesson in there which is my dad told me something he goes look you're building a small business and he goes but look but think about it you're still spending like every waking moment thinking about how to make this thing successful he goes if you worked on a big business you don't have to spend double the hours you're still gonna spend every waking moment trying to think of how to make it successful a big business on a small business both take the same amount of time why would you choose a small business and that to me was the right advice for me for who i was that's not the right advice for everybody but like somebody out there needs to hear that right now which is that like this idea that a a small thing is somehow easier or or less painful was just not true is not true and it it feels nice to be able to like pay people a lot of money or hire a certain type of person that makes your day to day far more enjoyable talk about the naming thing my opinion has changed on that to align with yours so one one thing we have here is branding or naming at the beginning so i've evolved my philosophy so i i used to try to get the whole thing right right away i was very precious about my idea and i wanted it to my baby to be cute and be ready for its first day of school and then i realized that nobody cares about my baby and i have no customers and nobody fake attention this thing could be called dog wrap and it doesn't matter until it matters and so now here's the balance that i figured out for me in most cases i try to get the name right off the bat because changing the name is of annoying you lose the brand recognition and i tried to get the trademark because i made that mistake before of not owning my trademark and having to change my name a year or two in because i realized oh i'll never be able to sell this without owning the trademark kind and so that was a big mistake i don't know true dude what do you mean i don't own i i sold the hustle without owning that trademark you didn't own a trademark for the hustle as a media company you didn't own anything because i know they have it now we looked it up they have it now but but what happens is if they look and they see that they can't get it because it's taken now you have a problem now you're either gonna get negotiated down is that true i see i didn't even know that like when mo was selling native deodorant he didn't own the trademark and it was an issue he's got the deal done and they're like wait you don't have the trademark he's like yeah but there's no other native deodorant he's they're like okay junior what are you talking about that's not how this works you know and so they then he's like okay who the he he's like i'll just go file for it they're like nope it's taken by some guy some woman or some guy sitting in palo alto doing nothing just squat on it and he goes to that person and he's like hey like the trademark he tells the story on the un his episode of the pod i think is like one of the first ten episodes of this podcast but the short version is he goes and he offers the person some like know he's like hey can i have it and they're like no and he's like okay i'll buy it like you know two grand and they're like no and then they figured out that he's selling his company and then the the price went like way up and i think he ended up having to buy it for like either like a quarter million dollars or like one or two million dollars he had to buy the trademark at the last minute that's so you know crazy fine when you're he's selling the company for a hundred million but like very painful process you know to do that better off just having it you taught me something i i thought that they were nonsense but i but i also used to think nate i mean look i my company was called the hustle that's a horrible name one time i had this conference called con con the content conference like i'm i i i my first the first business that i started making money online it was called itch juice baby like i like i'm horrible with names and but now i do actually think they're way important before i was like names are bullshit it doesn't matter what you call it someone's gonna come now i'm like on board with naming and branding is is very valuable so i don't think a bad name kills you but a good name lifts you i completely agree i think great design is a huge value add and cost almost nothing to have great design versus okay to bad design it's not actually more money that it takes it's taste you just have to have the right people to do it you can pay for that taste like you can pay a fancy agency because you know they have the taste but you could also just have taste yourself or find somebody that's cheaper that has taste my feeling on design is i don't start with fancy design i start with like you know whatever simple design and then i set a milestone almost as a reward which is if we get to x then i'm gonna fancy pants my design because it's more for me than it is really for anybody else at that moment but you know if you're if you're a consumer packaged good or something like that then the packaging obviously super important if you're a saas tool for whatever your design you know it doesn't matter as much before i i launched hampton i paid an agency i found an awesome agency overseas so it's like i think fifty or twenty grand and we did a whole branding thing and i'm like i can't believe i'm doing this and it was totally worth it did i send you that president it was really good and i liked it i was like oh this is cool and that's different you wouldn't have you would've have never done that before i have never would have done that it was totally worth it we both were very cheap with things before i would i wasn't cheap with spending money but i was cheap with my time meaning i placed no value on my time and i think you were cheap with spending money even though you had a bunch of cash in the bank ninety anymore then when i saw you spend twenty k on your branding before and i was like oh that makes sense he's got a killer name for his community hampton and then he's got like a really classy design that makes it feel elevated which is my word of the year then i was like yeah what are the areas where i've been cheap one of mine for example was in recruiting so i used to take pride in just recruiting myself by hand hunting and i would just be like yeah i'm gonna go find people and i'm gonna like message them and i'm gonna cold email them and i'm gonna convince them and i'm gonna interview them and i'm gonna and now i hire recruiters and i'm like oh for which roles for every role anything if i if need to hire first thing i do i just text my recruiter to this guy carson i'm like y carson i need x and he's like a great e comm recruiter and so i'm like carson i need a i need x and he's like on it and he's like super aggressive and so he's just like instantly we'll start sending me linkedin i'm like yes no yes no he does he a full time employee or he just he's got his own agency he's his own he's his own solo shop and so so i use him to hire for these roles and it just saves a ton of time and then i'm able to and i have him sometimes i'll be like y join this call so that you see what i ask so that when you're screening candidates you just ask these questions before me right and i'm getting a way better result using recruiters and yeah you pay the commission when when you when you hire the person but like hiring a great person faster is so is totally worth it so how do without blowing up this guy at carson spot how do you pay do you pay them a percentage same as own you pay a percentage of their first year salary and if they don't do pay them like six months later i pay him i think i what i do with him is i pay like thirty days after they join but if they don't work out like like we had one person didn't it didn't work out three months in so if if they don't make it three months then he just reimburse her credits to back or whatever and then do you do you do it for all like even an entry level position everything anything i need anything i need now i'm like what whatever i would spend the time doing this guy is going to spend all of his time doing and so it just moves faster and he's better and i'm like what the fuck was i using i used to used to take pride and i was like what am trying to save here the like you know let's say you to hire somebody for a hundred grand let's say the recruiter fee might be fifteen or twenty percent so you're gonna pay fifteen or twenty grand that's a lot of money yes but i do it my business if if your business is working then it makes total sense to be using recruiters to get increase your pipeline and and save time and get the get good butts and seats faster versus trying to do it yourself that's time you're not focused on the business that takes longer the biggest thing that's changed with me with hiring is reference checks so like for example i messaged someone two days ago i go hey i'm thinking about hiring this one person do you think that they'd be decent at managing a small team and it says i don't think they could manage anyone let alone themselves that was the reply and my reply my were my reply to that was alright thanks and i don't hire that person like i know you're that should be thank you so much what's your address i'm sending you something because most reference checks will not give you honesty the when somebody goes on limb is actually like yeah let me save you some pain here and give you my honest truth even though it doesn't feel good to take out opportunity away from somebody it's like you know sweet baby jesus thank you so much i i owe you one so like yeah i was like over the top like nice to this guy but reference checks are so important and i do two things differently the one i always ask for like three and then i call those three and i go who else did this person work with because don't give a shit about three that they sent me i'm just trying to like i'm trying to like figure out who i can reference who i can speak to that they didn't provide but also i won't blow up the applicant spot where if it's like know it's like someone who i that will be a little bit secretive and not tell their current employer and then so i do that like crazy and then here's what i ask consistently here's how the basically the point is i wanna hear bad shit about the person and i wanna figure out if the bad stuff is i'm okay with and so i say what are they out of scale one a ten they always say an eight or nine and i say alright how can they be a perfect tent like what's missing and then that's typically when they'll tell me like bad stuff and i'm always looking for that bad stuff and i'm like well you know they've made like mistakes doing an x y and z it's like okay i could put up with those types of mistakes or they they they like miss deadlines all the time i'm like well i i'm not gonna put up with miss deadlines that's i'm not willing to put up with so i like i do a shit ton of reference checks now so someone taught me a good way to do reference checks i don't remember the exact question but it's something along with there's there's two things that i do on the reference check one is you're just trying to figure out is this person one of the best people that they worked with that that company and so i'll ask a question i ask the following touch of question i'll say you know my experience is at every company there's like you can look around the room and there's two or three people inevitably in every single company who like they just have the team on their back you're just you're just looking at me you think man if we didn't have this person we would be in a rough spot or like the you know these things these good things that are happening just probably wouldn't have happened if not for their force of will and i would be like you know who are the people and i use this to recruit to like who the people like that at your company or i'll be like would the would you count this person as one of those people and i just trying to see how much conviction they have of i've being like oh yeah for sure or like yeah you know they're good right it's like you could say yeah two different ways i'm looking for which one of those it is the second thing i'll ask is i'll be like you know i'm thinking about hiring this like i'm leaning towards hiring them because i'm kinda trying to disarm them i'm trying to not make them feel like what they say is gonna like mess it up but i'll be like but you know but what i don't but i don't feel comfortable with this i don't know what they're not good at and everybody has things are not good at i'm not sure what i you know like i know that they must have things that are gonna disappoint me are gonna be things that they're not strong at i just don't know them yet what are they for this person so i can kinda feel like i have the full picture before i before i go ahead and pull the pull the trigger and hire them and that's how i get them to kinda tell me those things why you write paid tests what's that so my thing with hiring is i would say two things have improved my hiring number one paid tests instead of interviews so i will spend the time i'll spend three four hours creating a paid test so create i create a doc that's here's a brief and i'll say i'm gonna pay you and then depending on the role might be two twenty hundred bucks yeah might be two thousand dollars i'll pay you to spend a day on this because i wanna see what you do because i just wrote words equal lies it's like i don't really i'd rather just see your work than here you tell me that you're good at work and so paid tests is now i lean towards that i at in the end that saves me a ton of time the second thing i did i have a buddy who i let invest in one of my companies that i didn't really need as an investor but i kinda thought i i kinda of realized that like as a ceo your job is just decision making good judgment over and over you the ceo of your e comm business no i'm more like a chairman so i'm not got a day to day now but i will i don't what so what i'll do is i'm like oh ceo's job is just decision making or any leader let me just forget the word ceo just any leader's job is decision making how do i get my decision making it be better and like the difference of making ten to twenty percent better decisions every single month adds up that that creates a very different outcome so i brought this guy and i and what i told him i go you know i really want your help hiring and he's like sure all you know see if there's anyone in my network i go no i want you to do three interviews for this one role for me i'm hiring a cmo and i chief marketing officer and i think this is the make break hire for this business i want you on the call and i want you to leave the interview and i wanna listen and so we did two things first i would interview them separately you you the an investor you you let an investor do that he's my one of my best friends and yes he invested him my got it and he's he's himself a founder and and whatever so he's just got a lot of experience and he i've seen him make great hires and so what happened was i would interview them then he would interview i would like them and he'd be like no trash and i'm like what interesting what makes you say that what did i like what did you what not like and the thing for him was always like yeah i pressed him for specifics and he didn't have any he's like and what i realized was he presses for specifics way more than i was previously doing so i would say like i would try to figure out do you have experience doing this you know how would you rate yourself in this tell me a story there would have me one story what he would say is like cool what are the what was the revenue when you started what was you know and then how did it grow in the first eighty eighteen months and they're like he's like if they don't even know that number then they're out you know if you're you're cmo you don't know how much of the revenue change from day one to day you month twelve or whatever you're out then he's like they would say the number you'd be cool what were the three things that you did that most impacted that and he's like you know if you can't tell me three wins you've had in the three years you've worked there that like most impacted the the and then he would say oh you did that thing okay cool you screen share real quick and just show me like you're saying you did this can you just show me how you think about this i'm wanna hear you talk out a loud and i was like oh okay there's a different level level of specificity here that i need to be doing in my interview so a very useful thing was seeing how a master does it so that i could up my game that's kind of an interesting thing because i've changed i did to one eighty what was before what you're after i would create my before is i would create like the most ambitious goals because it was just like it was like mental masturbation of like just using this spreadsheet and like saying like yeah we're gonna three x this year and then like yeah five look at that yeah i'm like i'd be like yeah can you like change that three to a five and change this zero to a nine and like it's like boom we're there alright get after it guys i'm like i and i didn't understand that like hey they're the one doing the work and so it's kinda bullshit that i'm like train these crazy goals that there's no math behind it i also thought that like really ambitious goals were inspiring i i actually think a a achievable goals are inspiring and i try to hit like seventy five percent of the goals that we set if i'm if i'm not hitting about eighty percent my goal setting was quite bad so i hitting goals hitting hitting goals that are not that ambitious i think gets you a better outcome than missing incredibly ambitious goals i like he creates more momentum i agree with you momentum is momentum is key and i didn't get that my goal thing now so every time i start a project whether it's a company or inside of a company just like a initiative i got this thing called the kick dock it's a one page doc that i fill out religiously and it's basically like starts as just like what are we trying to do here we're trying to do this in planning what we trying to do then what does winning look like and this is where i set two goals so i have a floor goal and what i call the ef goal the floor goal is basically like you know if it was below this had be surprised and i'd be a little disappointed and then the ef goal is what would have us running around here chest bumping be like oh my god i can't believe it happened and now i have this range and i have kinda like my men in my dream and of course we're gonna shoot for the dream but we're gonna make sure that we also understand that like a win is a win and anything about this floor is a win and we have the two targets we ask ourselves what would it take to get to the floor what would it take to get to the to the to the fbi goal to get to the ceiling and so that's the first thing i do the second thing i do is i set an anti goal learned this andrew wilkinson which was yeah that was smart you can achieve you know you could double revenue but if i wake up every day and i'm stressed out or if i doubled revenue but profits went to zero because i spent so much on marketing well then i kind of lost while winning so anti goals like you know i'm not trying to work so hard i don't see my kids right like in life i think anti goals are really important to counter bounce what and whether the the specific thing here is what are the understandable traps we could fall into while trying to achieve those goals so for example with this podcast oh i wanna double rev double downloads great what's a trap you could fall into every day i'm on the algorithm trying to figure out what click bait shit i could do where i'm knocking on neighbor's doors asking them how they made their money and then i pants them and then i put a pie in their face like yeah that would do it but i would sell my soul and lose some dignity and not have that much fun doing it so that's like losing while winning so i think anti goals are really important to i started doing those the next thing on goal setting is i realized that much more important than the goal like i it's like i would do these like big bursts like we do this planning and set this goal than like three months later it's like hey what's the goal and then like it's not even on the tip of anyone's tongue and i'm like oh shit this is backwards like first of all i shouldn't be the one setting the goals because like you know in game of thrones the opening scene where ned stark has to like execute the guy and his son is like oh do you have to do this i can't someone else do this and he says no like he who speaks the sentence must swing the sword and it's like i can't expect you to go do all the work for some goal i set sitting in my boxer in excel right like now it's like if i'm gonna set a marketing goal i'm gonna set it with and really like the cmo has to own that goal they have to know that that's what they want that's what they think is achievable i'm gonna push back or hold the standard but they're gonna ultimately speak the senate because they're gonna be the ones who swings the sword so i make them do and then the second thing i do is i enforce that it's how do we keep this top of mind and at the tip of our tongue and that's like creating rituals where we're seeing things daily and weekly that tracks to it because it's far more important to regularly look at the kpis and ask ask the right questions versus trying to set a great goal once and then never thinking about it or not really looking at it on a religious basis do you lose your temper and yell have you ever made someone cry like an employee have you ever made an employee cry because you yell let him not because you no i never yelled but i've never made the cry because you never done that i i've i don't think i've ever yelled no i could be i could be like kind of else i i could i'll curse like i'll be like hold on what the fuck are we doing here right but is it's more of that that just you've never been like you're an idiot you've never insulted someone beat them up sure that i rude you know just punch them in the face so just i'm they're in rude but but it's you know there's some finesse to my rude where it's like a you know it's a backhand slap not a front head it's slap type of thing there's been many times in the past where i've lost my anger and i'll be really just a huge bitch to someone and and it's like i deeply regret that and not only do i regret that because it was just silly but like so the way that i used to like react to bad news is i would i would yell at people sometimes and i would lose my temper and i would freak out and i realized that that is just so weak for so many that is just a bad one you can i i i i come to this i've come to the conclusion i can't change people so if i think someone is just repeatedly not screwing up i i just i shouldn't have hired them i made that mistake i someone is either great you you're normally a great executor who sometimes makes mistakes or you're just never gonna change and you're just not good like i think losers exist and i don't wanna observe surround myself with them that's kinda like my my attitude like you're sign it's like a a store that's like you know no shoes no shirt no service it's like losers exist we must avoid them like keep them out yeah like i think that that's real like losers exist and sometimes i've been losing i tweeted this out when i was working at twitch i go or like right after there i left twitch i think i tweeted this out i go no well you know seems to be a pattern you know basically say there's a pattern now which is that when someone's great odds are they're great kind of right away like of course there are exceptions but i would say the general rule is that the best people i've ever hired it's pretty obvious within three four weeks that they're amazing and then they just stay amazing and of the people that were late bloom the key there was just the the only consistent pattern i found was i hired somebody before i even understood what role they should have or what the role is and like when they had an undefined role they didn't really do very well but then when i defined a role for them and i said look this is what you gotta do they perform and what i found is that when i have a defined role for someone and they're not very good it never never really changes from yeah you can't change them you can't change people and i used to be i used to lose my temper and i would like curse and out and i definitely made people feel stupid and that was that's such a bad mistake because a that's just wrong that's just not how you should treat people but b i'm not gonna get my desired outcome they're not gonna change exactly i i i still suck at that i would be honest i i'm not like a yell but i can make people feel small and i kinda realized this the other day i was like in every interaction you're either gonna walk away like you're gonna leave someone in and they're either they're gonna feel a little bit like they're gonna feel either smaller or bigger based on how that interaction went how you treated them and and i was like damn i i think i've make people feel small a lot and you know i'm i think i'm doing it in service of like we're doing dumb shit we need to do the right thing but i'm definitely not like i've seen people who are really good at still getting the thing done without ever making people feel small and i wanna learn that jedi who's is an example who's an example of someone who does that our buddy sue i think is pretty good at that don't know what he's like inside of a company but like i've seen him kind of like as adviser type of guy and i know what he's thinking in the moment i'm like oh man he's gotta be looking at this being like what in the actual fuck is going on here but that's not what comes out of his mouth and he will finesse his way there and i don't think it's because he's a kinder nicer person i think it's because the last thing you said which was i think he's realized that's not how you get to your desired outcome just that's not how you get desired not at all exactly so so i think that that's a that's definitely a an area to temporary in fact like the one time i did make somebody cry when i was firing somebody and i realized in that moment i was like oh he's not crying because he's sad that he's getting fired obviously there's not part of it but like he's very surprised and that's on me like i was too scared to be clear upfront that hey this isn't going the way we needed to go and it's go differently and here's what the level is and this is not like this con currently not at the level and so i what i avoided that tough conversation there and now i'm having a tougher conversation because i avoided that one how many people have you fired gotta i don't know like twenty really yeah that's that's a lot right i don't know i've been going for sixteen years like you one a years it's not been not not that long not that much i've not fired that many people i'm such a punk so there's a story about day port there's a story about day port and like dave porter was like i don't fire people like it's it's impossible to get fired by me i read i'll just pay you and you just are lazy and a bump and i'll just make fun of you and it's good content kinda feel the same way i suck at firing i i have a good script i basically say like we're off the bat go alright this conversation is gonna stink but i'm firing you today and we could talk about why if you want now i don't even say why i'm just like this isn't working out because it doesn't benefit me to say why it only hurts you because they i can sue you but i'm horrible at firing people like i i like i'm such a punk i like i i i hate having that conversation that i avoid it yeah but it's just like anything else like you just stretch the pain out longer versus oh i know the key is and i say this because everybody who but every manager everybody who becomes a manager of any people like don't worry you suck everybody sucks as a manager at the beginning nobody is naturally just like an amazing manager right off the bat it is a learned skill and the key to firing though if you can learn nothing else about firing is in the first ten seconds you need to say the news just do not beat around the bush you know the reason we're here today is because we're gonna let you go and you know the that has to come out of your mouth in the first ten seconds and if you say anything else right away in the first ten seconds just realize you're being a complete asshole because when it does come and they realize wait what were you just saying all that stuff about why didn't what and you're gonna blind them in a much worse way it's key absolutely key i have a couple other i wanna ask you about one is i think probably the key to making shit work keeping things simple and focused so knowing what to say yes to and what to say no to do you have anything that you actually do to make that to like do that better now i think that i'm so good at focus and i'm bad at it i've missed a lot of interesting opportunities but by default i say no to everything and it's actually cost me a bunch like for example at the hustle thought about launching multiple newsletters and i was like no nope we're just gonna do this one thing we're gonna do it well because scott be told me to focus and to only do this one thing so i'm literally gonna say no to everything and our competitor did and they scaled their revenue significantly faster so i said no to too much actually but my my default was just i'm gonna say no to everything that's interesting i'm the opposite i'm a shiny object you know syndrome kinda guy and so by the way the hustle didn't we didn't even have an instagram channel until like four years in like i like i was like no i'm gonna do social media we're doing nothing it was like we're doing nothing and we're just gonna do this one stupid newsletter all the time do we have lunch no dude one of my biggest one of my ceo by the way i used to be really cheap wanna deepen my soul the thing that hurts me most is one time i bought all this supplies from costco for a conference and i ended up returning two thousand dollars worth of like canned soda and stuff and like the lady at the front desk was like you're pathetic and because i was like what but she's like you know we throw all this stuff away is this just some from some party that you threw and it was like my answer was even worse which was like no it's for a business conference i made a lot of money and like and like hurts my soul that i was so cheap that i returned open cans of soda to at costco for two thousand dollars it oh like it crush me like like the twenty four like the twenty four case was like partially the things yeah and i and like i was like i can't believe that was such a punk move i can't believe i did that but that's one of my biggest regrets that's next to this one time i tipped this taxi driver and he said oh no you don't need to do this and i said oh no you need it instead of you earned it like those two things are like the two things that like crush my soul like i can't play i said that but what what what what what were you saying you're talking about focus what are were talking about focus fucking focus as we get back on track i create i i now have a a thing which is i i create oh a a doc for every business every year that's called the the big bets stock which is basically like we we are gonna make some bets this year we're gonna do some things but let's be super conscious about what we're saying yes to and what we're saying no to so my big bets stock and i'll literally write it like this i'll say something like we bet number one we really suck at inventory management today forecasting is just me looking at the spreadsheet and making up numbers based on what i hope happens i know there's probably a smarter way to do this other people certainly have solved this problem i need to figure out how to hire people who know how to do this so the bet is i'm gonna hire two people and that's gonna lower our waist from x to y and i write a sentence like that and then that's my bet i'm gonna make this higher for this outcome because of this problem and i write in a bet number two you know you keep talking about businesses though are you what how many are you what how many well like i i would do this even for the podcast right like big bets right hiring ari okay why why why why'd you do this why did you make this bet or we just launched the clips channel okay why am i going through this effort where i'm sitting here clipping my favorite parts of podcast podcasts because i hope that somebody out there wants to just listen to the best parts on youtube when they come up because that's how i like to listen to things and so i'll write it out and i'm like if i'm gonna invest my effort my time my money into something then i write it up or like you know maybe it's for shepherd for shepard hey here's the bets that we're gonna make and so i'll do this exercise is so useful so i'll write the big bets and it's like here's the three to four big bets that we're gonna make the things that we're gonna bet on that we're gonna do that we're gonna invest in and we're gonna try to do really really well and then i'll make the no list right before that and the no list i write there are a bunch of other things that we could talk ourselves into doing that are easily just however we're gonna say no to these things this year because we wanna do that we actually want the the things above to happen and then i'll make the no list here's the things we're not gonna do this year that we totally could have talked ourselves into so for me that was a very useful exercise and then when i bring people on everybody i sit down with them with this big bets i'm like here's what we're doing and then if they're the one responsible for it i'm i treat it like a commercial because i'm like i need to make this memorable i need this person to wake up and remember because it's not just for me to be focused i need my whole team to be focused how do i do that i basically shrink down i'm one of these bets into a almost like a like a slogan or a jingle for their role it's like your your mission is this remember that and i'm gonna say that to you probably a hundred times in the next three months and we're just gonna keep checking in on that and that's how i'm gonna bonus you is if you did that or not and that's how gonna assess your performance if you did that or not if i ever if if ever what's the priority it's that that's the priority and i took this because like peter t said that he did this at paypal he's like yeah i don't know whatever management not my favorite thing so here's my shortcut to management everybody at any time has one priority and if you ever try to talk to me about not that priority i will just simply leave the room i thought that was just a visual if that was so funny to me what fucking weirdo that i was like peter can you can you be normal for what like yeah what if someone walked up walked stood up and walked away when i was telling that telling them about stuff and i'm like dude can you just speak did already i get a new program that we could do and just like drifts away like a hot air balloon little a weirdo man i love stories i think there's store there are stories of elon doing that too we're like in an interview like within thirty seconds she would be like oh i'm not interested in this person and so he would just hang up yeah he he emailed out a just the laptop closed he was like if you're in a meeting and in the first few minutes of the meeting you realize that this is not useful to you or to anybody please stand up and leave like your time is valuable these meetings are drain and vote with your feet just get up and go that is at a completely acceptable behavior here at tesla you ever send emails with with the one of those emails where the subject is the body of the email yeah of course it's just like a pager basically you're treating it like a pager i had one of them with the only jobs i ever had my boss sent me an email like that and i was like is this how we send emails and then i i i sent them an email i go what's the status on this this thing and it was in the subject and the reply was don't ever send me an email like this again it was a very i i actually i think there are those levels so basically what i realized is that rich people would busy people treat email like texting so their email is like lowercase on their phone one line totally fine that's like their normal way of of emailing and then mega rich people treat email like its letters they'll have somebody actually screen them print them out and then they'll kinda like review them at their desk in paper like this is like the old school way of of of doing that do you know who does that i think mark laurie does that if i had a guess i feel like he did tell us that trump does that he told us he didn't even own a computer didn't know a computer yet but like i i've i met a couple people one of my old bosses used to do that like used to print out his important his assistant would have print out his important emails and just put them on his desk so that he could like see them and he would just leave a sticky note on them and she would go figure out what to do you know i worked for a guy who had four women at the office with giant tv screens just managing his inbound emails his and he would just stand and walk around they'd would be like oh this person said this they pull it up on the screen and he would just orally dictate his reply and then he would walk away and then they would just keep managing this insane most of the day i feel like i'm responding to stupid ass messages like on slack twitter text email it i cannot stand it man it is so hard so i actually think printing out that thing and replying it could be kinda cool actually yeah or creating you need some kind of firewall like for me it's like my assistant is the firewall she triage all the emails and then i only check my email for thirty minutes a day today like you know because it's already taken care of and if there's something that i needed a faster reply she'll tell me she'll text me and then that's it there was one other thing that i was gonna share which is there's a big difference i think that's worth saying which is pre product market fit and post so pre product market fit what you do versus post is very different i think most of this call has been about post but actually like most of my life has been about before you have product market fit before your product fit you don't do any of these things you literally just figure out what your product is and you go try to sell it and get customers and then you basically get rejected and you know you handle that and you iterate until you figure out what the product should be and who the customer should be and you've proven how to get product and customers to go up now you know to connect and and get more customers like i think that's worth it's saying to and then after you have figured that out after you have figured out that this product actually as a market and you know how to communicate it to customers you know how to get customers then you hire people to like do more of that and i would say like i saw you firsthand with hampton doing this we're like there was a couple months where you should be your calendar and it looked like they jen tower it was twenty minute calls back on top of each other sometimes overlapping and i was like what is this like where do and you're like yeah i'm trying to go get the members for hampton i'm trying to figure out what hampton it is if you you sent me like a like a kind of a script or like a landing page you were writing it yourself yeah trying to explain what the benefits are and who it's for and you considered like you know should i take this angle or this angle or this angle like would help you either like reply on the google doc it's kinda like it's kinda like being a comedian you know what i'm saying like when you when hassan min h finally does this netflix show he's done two hundred before that and you see which angle hits right and it's the same thing like i gotta see which angle which angle is hitting someone tweeted out or something they're like product market product market fit is like sex if you have to ask you're not having it or something like that and i was like that's so stupid i've definitely asked in both those situations if i have it or not oh like that's one of those lines that's one of those lies that sounds good but that ain't true i was uncertain multiple times about both of them things is it happening is this it is this happening are we doing it i on that note that's odd i feel like i could rude world i know i could be what i want to from at all in it like a days off on a less travel never looking back