Today on The Startup Chat we talk about worry. We get lots of questions about things that are rooted in worry. Worry is a useless emotion that just paralyzes action and problem solving. There are 2 different problems people worry about. The problem you can’t do anything about. The problem that you will never have. Worry can be helpful in business because it tells you there is an issue that needs to be addressed. A worry should be short term and dealt with in a matter of hours not days or weeks. Here are some observations we had about worry: What exactly is a worry The 2 questions to ask yourself Problems you will never have The difference a little experience makes Hiten’s helpful hack for worrying The productive way to worry vs. the unproductive way to worry Learning how to worry is key to keeping your business running smoothly. Problems should be dealt with quickly, when a worry creeps up, be proactive. We invite you to join our Facebook group.  It’s great to have such an incredible group of entrepreneurs out there making it happen every day. We’d love to hear from you; please feel free to join our Facebook group and share your experiences, challenges, and motivation with us and the rest of Startup Chat community. We appreciate having your email address at  The Startup Chat  because we’ll be sharing some special podcast episodes and other things exclusively with the people on our email list.  Click the link above and fill out the email address box to become part of the community today! As always, you can hit us up on Twitter @Steli or @hnshah, #thestartupchat. The post 520: Encore episode – How to Worry in Business appeared first on The Startup Chat with Steli & Hiten.

In today’s episode of The Startup Chat, Steli and Hiten talk about The HEY launch. Basecamp launched their new product, HEY, recently and have succeeded in creating a lot of buzz and a huge waiting list in the process. In this episode, Steli and Hiten talk about how HEY was marketed before it launched, how the launch of HEY was a campaign, the unique position of Basecamp as a company and much more. Time Stamped Show Notes: 00:00 About the topic of today’s episode 00:41 Why this topic was chosen. 02:04 One thing about Basecamp that a lot of people don’t realise. 02:48 About HEY. 03:47 How the launch of HEY was a campaign. 05:00 Another interesting thing about the HEY launch. 05:53 The unique position of Basecamp. 07:38 How Apple is a very principled company. 08:30 How Basecamp has found a middle ground. 10:03 About Basecamp’s marketing strategy. 3 Key Points: The team about basecamp is that they’re not as strategic as you might think. They just have principles that have worked for them for over 20 years.They don’t need to make privacy the enemy when they launch.Who starts a battle with Apple? [0:00:01] Steli Efti: Hey everybody, this is Steli Efti. [0:00:02] Hiten Shah: And this is Hiten Shah. [0:00:04] Steli Efti: And today on The Startup Chat we’re going to talk about something that we usually never do, which is a recent product launch, HEY, and maybe the concept of beef as marketing. I don’t know. We’ll see. But during the last couple of weeks, there’ve not been many really impactful business product launches, I think, or at least if there were any- [0:00:26] Hiten Shah: I mean we don’t really talk about news on here. That’s really what you’re going after, right? [0:00:29] Steli Efti: We never do that. Yes. [0:00:30] Hiten Shah: We don’t do that, but we’re going to talk about news today. [0:00:33] Steli Efti: Yeah, we are, because it’s sort of fun. To me, at least, it’s been fun to observe the Basecamp folks launched a new email product. It’s called HEY. They teased it for a long time, they had a waiting list, and then they launched it. And even before they launched it, actually, they spent a good amount of time, critiquing privacy in email, which was kind of curious, interesting. They always like to fight battles, especially when they have products in the battle in some way, but they always want to stand for some bigger idea, go after some big evil thing that needs killing, and make it a cause. And so at the beginning I thought it would be privacy. They would just shoot at all these email providers that don’t respect your privacy. I thought that would be the big battle, but it turns out the big battle’s with Apple, which is even more fun. [0:01:28] Hiten Shah: So here’s what’s interesting. So these folks at Basecamp launched hey.com, and part of their marketing campaign prelaunch was privacy. Post-launch, it’s not even that it’s a battle with Apple, because I really don’t think they expected it, frankly speaking. I think a lot of people think they’re that smart or strategic, but they’ve even come out and said, “We didn’t expect this.” I think one thing about this company that people don’t realize is they’re very straightforward, and not as strategic as you might think, because they just have principles that have worked for them for 20 plus years, and they follow those principles, and they’ve written all those principles. In their Getting Real book, they have a section called pick a fight or choose an enemy. I mean back in the day their enemy was Gantt charts. I don’t know if you recall at all, but with Basecamp, original Basecamp, it was Gantt charts. And they’re like, “The enemy’s Gantt charts.” I mean now, with HEY, here’s what I’m thinking. They don’t need to make privacy the enemy when they launch because it is identified in their product. Every time you get an email that has an open tracker or a click tracker, I think it’s specifically around open, if I’m not mistaken, which is a lot of email you get, basically all the marketing email you get has open tracking, they let you know. Dude, Steli, they don’t need to talk about it. Just use the product and you know. You just know who’s tracking you, and they call it out, and they don’t need to do anything else. They don’t need to talk about it anymore. I think prelaunch it was the one thing they could get everyone riled up about, and get some momentum in their direction after forever and a day of not launching anything. It’s been years, many years, before they got excited about something. I mean they get excited about their new base camps, but not in this way. They didn’t have anything to launch. We’re back to campaign based launches. This was a campaign, and privacy was just the best hook early on. And I’m sure they tested it with tweets. If you go back in history with some of their tweets, they tested it before they even threw down. They made a big deal out of it. They said, “Hey, that’s bad,” but they never really said, “Hey, we’re building something against it,” yet. In the early, early days, I don’t recall them actually going after it in a way where I was like, “Oh, they’re building an email tool,” until they really quickly came out with it. And I’m sure they tested … Seems to have tested different positioning before launch. So now post-launch, I think honestly they’re doing what they do best, which is they’re adapting to the narrative that gets shaped as time goes on. And they’re ones that are happy to stand up for themselves when they believe somebody is doing them wrong. And we’re just seeing that. And they believe that Apple was treating them unfairly, and they made a big, big, big, big, big, big, I can’t even say big enough on this one, deal out of it by basically saying, “Hey Apple, that’s not cool.” [0:04:47] Steli Efti: We have, but it’s not just that. I think maybe the other interesting angle around this is that because of the position that they have and the reputation … And it’s not two founders that are launching their first thing. They have a big successful business, and they’re wealthy, and they have a big reputation, and a very, very big following. And so they didn’t just take whatever unfair treatment they perceive to have gotten from Apple and were behind the scenes trying to move it, they made it kind of front page news and started a very public battle with a company that … Who starts battles with Apple? [0:05:37] Hiten Shah: Nobody. [0:05:37] Steli Efti: Nobody. Everybody’s terrified of Apple. If Apple doesn’t like you, that’s a problem in today’s world. It’s a big problem. And I think that they’re kind of in this unique position of A, they like fights. This is not everybody’s thing in culture, especially DHH is somebody that loves to argue publicly with people, who’s good at it. Just likes to have fights. Just, I think, enjoys it to a certain degree. And so they’re good at this. Then they love the David versus Goliath kind of with a small one that is treated unfairly by this massive organization. We’re going to fight for what’s right in the world. Think they love that position, and they’re really good at it, and it’s part of their ethos and their principles. And then they’re in this unique position where, although they’re so small, they’re so independent, they’re so wealthy, they’re so successful with some other stuff that they’re doing that they can make this big bed and start this really big public battle with a company that nobody wants to battle with because they’re all terrified of them. So it’s a very unique position to be in. And I’m very curious. Typically, Apple doesn’t care. That would be what I would assume. It’s just Apple will shoulder shrug, no matter how many tweets are out there, and just go, “We don’t care.” And that might work, because it has always worked for them, and what are people going to do? Is anybody really going to boycott Apple because of this HEY, because Basecamp’s HEY product didn’t get what they want. No, but you see more and more people that came out and shared their stories of unfair treatment. Kind of gotten encouraged by that. So it’s going to be interesting if this is going to build momentum and kind of become a bigger thing, or if it’s going to kind of run out. [0:07:22] Hiten Shah: Well, they already acquiesced to some extent. So they basically are going to follow some rules that Apple set out, and then they’re going to have … Not to get in the weeds of it, because that’s not what we’re really talking about, but they are actually going to acquiesce to Apple’s demands to a great extent. And I think you’re basically dealing with two companies that are very principled. Apple’s super principal. That’s why they don’t acquiesce. That’s why they don’t do anything when they see these, they’re like, “This is what we believe. And we believe we know what’s right, and that’s the end of it. And there’s nothing you can say to change our minds,” but the Basecamp folks just kept pushing. And then, for lack of a better way to think about it, it felt like they came to their senses to some extent and said, “Well, we’re willing to do this. Apple, what do you think?” And they tweeted that, or something similar to that. And then Apple said, “Yeah, we’re willing to work with you if you do those things that you mentioned.” Now, what happened? That’s the big question. Because for me, that’s them acquiescing, that’s’ Basecamp acquiescing, especially after having such a strong point of view about it, they decided, “Okay, well we’ll follow your rules, but we’re not going to … We’re not going to get charged 30% though. But we’ll your rules.” So they found a middle ground. Well, here’s the thing. A lot of people that have found those middle ground, a bunch of people, have publicly said, “We deal with this quietly. These folks just dealt with it in a noisy way.” and that’s what’s interesting to me, which is they already found a solution to keep their stuff in the store, let their updates go through and Apple be relatively happy. So what was all the big stink for? Well, if you start looking at the numbers, they doubled their wait list between roughly when they launched and basically when this solution came about today, this morning actually. This is Monday morning right now when we’re recording this, and it’s [WDC] today as well. And I think both parties were somehow incentivized to solve this problem by today. And it got solved. And so in a way it’s almost like Apple did the smart PR move here, but Apple didn’t have to do anything except say, “Okay, we’re okay with your solution.” And that’s what a lot of developers do privately with Apple because it’s Apple’s platform, and I’m sure they have good reason to keep it the way it is. Regardless of what you think, they’re very reasoned and principled. So their principles are their principles. So what’s fascinating to me is you had them create all this noise, and there’s a possibility they doubled their whole wait list as a result of this, so when you look at it from a business standpoint, they did the right thing for their business, the folks at Basecamp did. And this whole idea of picking a fight, choosing an enemy, and the strategy that they use is quite an effective one if you can stomach it, because there will be people that hate you when you pick a fight, period. And Basecamp can stomach it. HEY is designed around this idea that we need to change the way email is done, and what people don’t appreciate, just for a quick second about it, is what these folks are trying to do is a freaking game changer, because let me point this out. You have alternative email clients, but you don’t have alternative full on power my whole email services. So there’s Google that does it. There’s Microsoft that does it. There’s Apple that does it. And then there’s literally nobody else except a bunch of small players that power your email fully. And now you have HEY. And if you just focus on business use cases, because that’s what HEY has already come out and said that’s what they’re all about. Think about it. 37signals is their base camp. They use their own stuff for version one, and that’s what they say. We build it for us. They’re using it for all of Basecamp’s emails right now, all their 50 people. So they already know how it works at a company, and they’re going to turn on work email. They already have a page and everything so you can apply for that wait list. So this is, one, brilliant, and two, extremely ambitious compared to Superhuman, or any of those little clients, because they’re not powering the full email stack. They’re on top of Gmail, or on top of Outlook, or whatever. So it’s underappreciated how serious and important this business is for the future of their business. This is a business that will likely be a lot bigger than Basecamp overtime. [0:12:46] Steli Efti: Boom. There you go. And it took them a minute. It took them- [0:12:50] Hiten Shah: A damn good minute. [0:12:51] Steli Efti: … A good minute. They were doing all these fucking apps, and then they were like, “Fuck, all this. We’re only going to do Basecamp. We’re killing everything.” And then they were like, “Basecamp is the shit. We’re only going to focus on that.” And you knew this was probably not true. And then it took a couple years, and then boom. And you got to give it to them. [0:13:11] Hiten Shah: Got to give it. [0:13:12] Steli Efti: They’re going big. The idea’s big, the brand, everything, the launch. They’re attempting something truly big. And you can tell that they’re excited about it. You could tell it took something like this to get them excited again, to launch something [crosstalk 00:13:24]. So from the sight lines, I think both you and I are applauding and tipping our hat, and wishing Godspeed that this is going to work out and be a huge success. [0:13:37] Hiten Shah: We need another email option, truthfully, from the ground up, not some client bullshit. We need a ground up option. That is the best way to reinvent email is start from the ground up, and they’re doing it. And I don’t see anyone else trying, frankly speaking. So that’s why, forget their marketing, forget all of that, they are doing it. I don’t see anyone else trying. That’s admirable. In softwareland, in SaaS, as a founder, that’s bold. And they’re doing something bold and they’re not venture backed. Sure, they have a bunch of capital they can throw at it, but they earned that. They’re not raising money for this. It has nothing to do with that. They get to do it their way. That’s also very, very different than what most of us look at when we think about how these big companies are invented. [0:14:30] Steli Efti: There you have it, folks. The HEY launch. Very interesting, incredible product. Everybody who’s listened to this podcast knows the Basecamp folks, but they’re back. They’re back. [0:14:42] Hiten Shah: They’re back, and it’s exciting. It’s nice to see. [0:14:44] Steli Efti: It is exciting, yes. There you go. All right. That’s it from us for this episode. We’ll hear you very soon. Bye-bye. [0:14:49] Hiten Shah: Take care. [0:14:50]The post 519: The HEY launch: Pick a fight to get attention appeared first on The Startup Chat with Steli & Hiten.

In today’s episode of The Startup Chat, Steli and Hiten talk about how reinvention causes everything to thrive. People or companies might seek to reinvent themselves or change the way they do things, and most of the time, this can be a good thing. However, a lot of the times, people think that for you to reinvent yourself, something has to be destroyed. While this is true in some cases, it doesn’t always have to be. In this week’s episode, Steli and Hiten talk about reinvention versus destruction, one beautiful thing about the USA, how reinvention can cause hardship and much more. Time Stamped Show Notes: 00:00 About today’s topic. 00:31 Why this topic was chosen. 01:07 Reinvention versus destruction. 02:24 One beautiful thing about the USA. 04:01 How reinvention can cause hardship. 05:13 How more American companies go through reinvention. 05:47 Why Hiten wrote this tweet. 06:01 How America has always been about reinvention. 06:23 What destruction is about. 07:19 What causes things to survive and thrive. 3 Key Points: I don’t think destruction is always required for reinvention.Reinvention is such an interesting concept.It is not easy to reinvent yourself. [0:00:01] Steli Efti : Hey everybody, this is Steli Efti. [0:00:03] Hiten Shah: And this is Hiten Shah. And today on The Startup Chat, we’re going to talk about something I… Popped in my head and I tweeted. And the statement is, “Reinvention is what causes everything to thrive.” And for me, just to lay it out real quick, this comes from the fact that many folks think about destruction, or destroying things, in order to build them up again, or start fresh. And I feel like that’s a very… Has a lot of negative connotations and can probably bring up a lot of things that prevent people from thinking about how to change and adapt. I truly do believe that is how you thrive. And when I think about it like that, I think the right word is reinvention, versus destruction, or versus tearing things down. Because I don’t think, that is always required for reinvention. Maybe it is sometimes, but our worldview, I believe, which is healthier, should be oriented around, at least my worldview, I prefer being oriented around reinventing the things I’m working on. My business, my product, my marketing, my sales, whatever. Myself. Over thinking of it as rebirth, which is what a lot of other folks sometimes call some of this stuff. So anyway, I know you wanted to talk about it Steli, because you saw it amongst the things I tweeted recently. [0:01:38] Steli Efti : This is one of the new format that we’ve established this year, which is, Hiten tweet episode, which is when I see a tweet of yours and I’m like, “I wonder why he tweeted that. This interesting thing. Let’s talk about it.” Which is what we would do if we met up for coffee today, I’d be like, “I saw this tweet of yours. What was up with that? That’s an interesting thought.” I think reinvention is just such an interesting concept. See, I thought about it very differently, because I didn’t have the context. But to me, one thing that I’ve always been explaining to Europeans, about one of the greatest things about the US to me, and the US has a lot of bad things about it, and I talk about that as well with people, but the one beautiful thing that I find in the US to be more true than in any other place that I’ve ever lived or visited, is this belief in the individual, and the belief in the power of reinvention for the individual, right? [0:02:50] Hiten Shah: Yes. [0:02:51] Steli Efti : So you can be anything and everything you want to be. And there’s no expiration date to that. [0:02:57] Hiten Shah: Right. [0:02:58] Steli Efti : There is none. You could be 60 years old, your whole life you were an accountant and you now want to be an actor. America is just going to go, Go for it, buddy. [0:03:09] Hiten Shah: Yeah why not? Go for it. [0:03:10] Steli Efti : Pack up your shit, drive to LA and go for it. Right? [0:03:14] Hiten Shah: Give it a shot. [0:03:15] Steli Efti : Give it a shot. [0:03:16] Hiten Shah: Absolutely [0:03:17] Steli Efti : No other place on earth. Not a single other place on earth… [0:03:22] Hiten Shah: Embraces that. [0:03:23] Steli Efti : Is embracing that. Every other place on earth in one version or another, would tell the 50 or 60 year old person, “Shut the fuck up, sit down and be an accountant like you’ll be for the rest of your life. You can’t do it. It’s too late. You can’t do it.” And to me, that is one of the most powerful ideas that America has ever produced. It’s the idea, that the individual can be anything and everything they want to be. And there’s no exception. And there’s no expiration date to that. You can reinvent yourself in your eighties, go for it, buddy. We believe in you. That obviously can cause a lot of hardship, right? Because, it is not easy to reinvent yourself. And it’s not, everybody is on equal footing in terms of talent, looks, whatever, background to accomplish anything they want in life, obviously, right? There’s a lot of heartbreak that comes with that idea, right? Which is a lot of heartbreak that comes with the idea of greatness in general, right? You want to be great. You’ve got to have your heart broken. More so than settling to whatever you can easily attain, but that’s such a powerful idea to me, a beautiful idea to me. So when I hear reinvention, I always think about this powerful American idea of, you can change your life, you can reinvent who you are, your identity, your life, at any given point in time, you just have to decide, and it’s within your power. And that potentially is also part of the power of a lot of American companies that have been around for a very long time, where I don’t know if this is true, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s also true on a corporate level where there’s more American iconic company stories, where a company went through multiple stages of complete reinvention and rejuvenation. Just becoming a completely different company because it was bold enough to believe it could become a completely different thing. And so that’s kind of the fascinating, but now let me ask you, was there a specific conversation or thing you read, or something that triggered the tweet, or was it just something because of the news, because of what’s going on with a collective current energy around tearing down and destroying current systems of the past, that make you think destruction, no, reinvention? [0:05:56] Hiten Shah: Yes. [0:05:57] Steli Efti : What was it that caused the tweet? [0:05:59] Hiten Shah: I think you brought it up in a way about America. I don’t think America’s ever been about destruction. I think it’s always been about reinvention. You’re trying to reinvent things, and people are trying to reinvent things. Part of it, is this idea that nothing is permanent. And we think a lot when we think about permanent, and impermanent to be about destruction, but that would mean that everything that came before something didn’t matter. In a way destruction is about things that don’t matter anymore. And that’s the general feel when you think about that word. While reinvention is about, to do it again. We get to do a better. To do it differently. So in a way it’s about language. I think in terms of what’s going on in the world, and that thought, it’s very unrelated for me in the sense of like, I think there’s destruction and I think there’s good reason for that. At the same time, what are we really aiming for? We want to reinvent a lot of things. I mean that’s what all this destruction is about. So I never really thought about it that much. The focus for me was more on the thriving part. Which is like, what causes things to survive and thrive? And what’s the pattern? And I think reinvention is the pattern, nothing else. So coming out of the civil unrest, in America, what’s going to happen? Well, if something is to change, there are many things that are going to have to be reinvented. And that, your guess is as good as mine, whether that’s actually going to happen or not. And so all this destruction needs to have reinvention at the forefront of it. And at the current moment, it doesn’t feel like it does. And we’re just starting to come to a place where it might, but the way things work out usually in the world is like, there’s a lot of noise and nothing changes. And so this is more about, how do you change for the better, how do you thrive? And I think the word I got to was just simply put, it’s about reinventing things, because they can be done better, now that we know better. Even if the way they were done in the past, we thought was good enough. Once we realized it’s not, what do we get to do? And I think your sentiment about America is really needed right now, because that is America. America is the country where you as an individual, get to reinvent yourself. But so do people, groups of people and so do companies, organizations, and thus, so does the world. [0:08:54] Steli Efti : What do you think causes reinvention more? Is it unhappiness or pain or is it inspiration? Maybe let’s move away just for a moment, away from the individual and think about companies, startups, founders, right? When you’re on a certain path with your company, the companies that have successfully reinvented themselves, what’s the formula? What is the trigger? What causes that? Is it just an inspiration, a grasping for something new? Or is it, a running away from the old, or sensing that the old is coming to an end or something like that? What has caused the best reinventions to happen, or when you have reinvented yourself or any of your businesses, what triggered it? [0:09:44] Hiten Shah: Awareness. You don’t get to reinvent anything unless you have awareness. Individually, you’re, self-aware. Organizationally, you become organizationally self-aware as a organization, which means evaluating things that you’re doing, not just letting them be, and making sure that if they’re broken or if they can be done better, you find a path, you find a way to do them better. So if your business is struggling right now, reinventing it, is what you need to do. I look at all the restaurants that are actually thriving right now, they’ve all re reinvented themselves. It’s probably the most impactful example I can have right now. For every restaurant that needs to reopen or wants to reopen, if they haven’t already reinvented themselves, they’re going to have to reinvent themselves. They’re going to have to reinvent core aspects of doing business, whether it’s as simple as temperature checks of employees, all the way to ways to actually deal with the increased costs, without necessarily to straight up passing it on to the customer. All those things require reinvention. I think we are now at a place, with a couple of different things that have happened, and maybe more, that the opportunity is reinvention. We actually get to reinvent so much more than I think we know we’re going to have to, or get to, in the coming weeks, days, months, years, maybe even decades. This is not a simple thing that has happened to us. This is not a straightforward thing with a straightforward solution, whether it’s the pandemic or the unrest. And I personally call it, civil unrest. That’s what I think is happening, and now it’s global. Which is blowing my mind, that it’s global. Not because of the topic, or the severity of it, none of that. That’s cool, I get that, and I mean` that’s not cool, but I get it. What I mean is, it’s global. Wow. That’s when you know, there’s just a lot that probably could be changed, because it isn’t localized. This kind of unrest when it happens in America, apparently it goes global. That hasn’t been the case for almost anything I can recall. I’m not a historian. I don’t know. [0:12:12] Steli Efti : I don’t think so. [0:12:13] Hiten Shah: But wow. Right? And that’s what got me. It’s one thing to be like, “Okay, there’s a bunch of stuff happening in America.” It’s another thing to be like, “Well, it’s happening in France now. It’s happening in England. It’s happening everywhere.” So I think we have a lot of opportunity going forward, but we should think of it more as reinvention, not destruction. We’re not trying to destroy anything. We need to reinvent the way we think about things, and the way we do a lot of things. [0:12:40] Steli Efti : Beautiful. Especially, I don’t know why, but especially during this episode, you’ve spoken more poetically, even [inaudible] the usually, but it’s such a beautiful, important, I think, thought, to share with people, asking yourself, “What needs reinvention? What can I reinvent? What can I participate in, in terms of the change I want to see?” And trying to all do our parts of moving away from the thing we want to tear down and kill, and are unhappy about, and want to critique and throw things at, to what is the awesome thing we want to build? If there ever was an opportunity to reinvent things on a global scale, to invent things to shake things up, seems to be right now, the time seems to be now. So what do we want to do with that opportunity? I think that’s the big question. [0:13:33] Hiten Shah: I couldn’t agree more. I mean, that’s where we’re at. I mean, we don’t have a choice. [0:13:37] Steli Efti : Yeah. It’s going to happen. So the question is just, “What are we going to make happen?” [0:13:42] Hiten Shah: Right. [0:13:42] Steli Efti : Yeah. My man, all right, we’ll wrap this up at this point, and we’ll hear all of you very soon. [0:13:52] Hiten Shah: Bye. [0:13:52]The post 518: Reinvention Causes Everything to Thrive appeared first on The Startup Chat with Steli & Hiten.

In today’s episode of The Startup Chat, Steli and Hiten talk about how to make plans during 2020. With everything that has happened in 2020, you’d be forgiven if you chose to describe this year as the year of crisis. With this crisis comes uncertain and it can be quite challenging to make long-term plans in uncertain times like these. In today’s episode, Steli and Hiten talk about if you should make plans in 2020, how you should plan in this year, why your timelines have to be shorter during a crisis and much more. Time Stamped Show Notes: 00:00 About today’s topic. 00:42 Why this topic was chosen. 01:33 Should you make plans in 2020? 02:43 How you should plan in 2020. 04:19 Why your timelines have to be shorter during a crisis. 04:59 How Steli currently makes his plans. 06:04 The right way to approach crazy times like these. 08:00 How Hiten approached the crisis. 11:59 How teams could deal with high pressure. 12:12 How you can adapt to the uncertainty. 3 Key Points: You’re just planning, but not as far ahead as you normally would.2020 isn’t done with us.During a crisis, your timelines have to be shorter [0:00:01] Steli Efti: Hey everybody, this is Steli Efti. [0:00:03] Hiten Shah: And this is Hiten Shah. [0:00:05] Steli Efti: And today on The Startup Chat, we’re going to talk about how to make plans during 2020. So, making good plans is always challenging, but I find 2020, I mean… 2020 is a particular, unique year, in that it probably is a more challenging year for companies and startups and founders to make any sort of plan that people might have real confidence in, especially if it’s a longterm plan. So I’ve encountered this a couple of times this year already with friends that I thought it might be useful for the two of us to unpack this for our listeners, which is, “What the hell do you do?” If you run a startup, if you’re a founder and you want to plan, should you, in 2020? Are plans completely useless? Are they totally useful? And how should you think about making plans kind of the way that we approach this and the things that we’ve seen work well? I thought might help founders keep their sanity and hopefully accomplish more of the things they want to accomplish, even during an outstandingly crazy year like 2020. So, first of all, let me ask you this question. 2020, should we still make plans or would you advise anybody to stop making plans because this year is too nuts? [0:01:29] Hiten Shah: So, the… The… I’ve had, like, two or three conversations specifically about this, and I’ve shared something that… By the time I have two or three and I get the same question, and it’s a new question, I tend to like, have some kind of way to think about it or, like, you know, I’m driven crazy, you know? So I think that’s a really good question. The way it worked for me, and the way I was approaching this, not too long ago is I… Hang on, I just need to fix my mic. So I basically… When the sort of pandemic came along, I was taking things in a sort of hour by hour adjustment period, so to speak. So everything to me was thrown out the door because now all of a sudden, there’s this virus that we’re all dealing with and we have to sort of figure out what that means for us. And so I was taking it hour by hour because new information was coming in. This is like all up to about Shelter in Place. And then after Shelter in Place, I think the first few days were very similar and our, by “our”, meaning, like people were consumed with the news about it. Nobody knew what was going on obviously, and what was going to happen to us as a society like overall. Like what’s next? And then basically I… I realized that I was then going day to day and after that I was going week to week and I barely got to like a month ahead. And then the protests started and the rioting and kind of… And then it got global. And then I got back to like almost an hour by hour, just making sure that like, you know, people I knew were safe and accounted for and were kind of, you know, taking care of themselves and then more news kept coming in and opinions and all these other things. And then I went to about day by day. And right now, I’m still at about day by day. I think I’m about to be week by week soon, maybe starting next week. And what that means is you’re just planning not as far ahead as you normally would. Because oftentimes we’re planning the month, the quarter, the year. I don’t think we can do that. And it’s not because I expect anything new to show up, but I definitely, more than ever, expect the unexpected. [0:04:12] Steli Efti: Yeah. 2020 isn’t over, and isn’t done with us in my opinion. So that’s interesting. So first let me… I’ll share my side of things because there’s a good amount of overlap, but there’s some differences and then we can unpack those. I think that… I think by principle, I kind of follow a very similar strategy where, you know, once the pandemic hit and kind of the quarantine and all that. Even before that, I think that my… I think that my basic principle is that during crisis, your timelines need to be short. Shorter, right? Because it’s like the most adaptable that when… Because there’s new information, and information can be quite drastic in the way that it shifts things and circumstances and realities. It seems that the super longterm plans are very, very useful in a more stable environment. But when you have massive instability and where there’s huge volatility, it just makes no sense as a futile exercise to try to plan for the next six months. [0:05:23] Hiten Shah: Right. [0:05:23] Steli Efti: So the planning cycles shorten drastically. Now, they didn’t… I didn’t go to day by day for me, but what happened was that I moved them to week by week. That was kind of from the get go, my like, “All right, we scrap the quarterly plans, scrap the plans for the year, we have to plan sprint. We have to plan one sprint at a time and we’re taking these weeks one at a time”. And that’s what I did personally, but also what we did from a company perspective, which is another thing I’d be interested and curious about on the day by day thing. And, you know, then, the rights and civil unrest situation happened. Even before that things seem more stable, but I.. So people were pushing a little bit, maybe we should extend the planning cycles, maybe things are back to normal. And I think my opinion at the time was that things were not normal, but we had just gotten used to it. Right? We just had gotten used to some of the things that were going on in the world, but nothing that was happening seemed normal or stable to me. And then the whole civil unrest around the world situation happened. I think it… Funny enough, I think that their, the reactions emotionally, especially for many people that I knew were even much stronger than with a pandemic. And I don’t know if it was because of the subject matter, or what I suspect, it was also a compounding effect. Like, so much had built up, so much anxiety, so much stress, so much unhappiness and worry. And then something like that happens, such a crazy injustice and then kind of… It just explodes and people feel very strong about it. And so, we never got to adjust our temp… Plans for timing, and it just stayed week by week, up until today. And the advice that I’ve been giving to a lot of founders has been that, you know, during crazy times like this, you want to adjust and adapt fast. And so that means you can’t be rigid with your outlook of the future. You can’t be rigid with your beliefs of what’s going to happen next and making these three to six month plans right now, just seems… Just seems like an exercise to try to control the future and make things stable or feel safe. And I think the problem with that… The particular or… The pitfall that you can step into is not just that it’s an exercise that will be useless in two weeks when something new happens in the world, but it’s also that you might get sucked into wanting to believe in that plan, and then when new facts arise and when the world is changing, you might have a bigger tendency to want to ignore these and to hold onto your quarterly plan or whatever. Right? And not adjust, not adapt, not change quickly enough as the world is changing. And so I think we’re super aligned on the: shorten the timeline, it’s probably a good idea. Super longterm plans right now: probably not that good of an idea. Let me ask you on the day by day, is that something that you did personally? Or is that really what you did personally, as well as with your company and everybody in your team? You said, “We’re, you know… We’re scrapping all the plans. We’re just every day in the morning, we’re going to decide what we’re going to be working on”. I… It’s hard for me to believe that that would be the case, but I’m curious to hear that. [0:08:56] Hiten Shah: Yeah. I think, generally, a team needs some level of clarity from leadership, for lack of a better word. And the areas we actually took a more day to day approach, especially earlier on, before we could see the patterns, was sales. And that was because of lead volume, depending on kind of the business you’re referring to, or like you want to talk about. But just generally speaking for everybody, lead volume was different for different types of businesses. It either went to zero, or didn’t change, or blew up in a positive way. It was basically one of those three. But you had to take it day by day to really figure out what was going on, and what those patterns were and how they changed. For me, the same happened in marketing. And then when it came to product development, I think that… I actually truly think that, like, it wasn’t… It’s not necessarily about tasks that changed day to day, it was more about planning that changed day to day. What I mean by that is, we kept getting new information that made it so if we made up a plan tomorrow, that plan could be obsolete because of something new that happened. Or something we figured out from the day before. So that’s kind of what I meant, which is like… I don’t think that to me… This isn’t about, “Oh, someone’s day to day tasks are changing”, but the angle and approach they take might be very different based on new information coming in. For example, in certain cases, we saw a lot more traffic for certain types of traffic. In other cases, we saw like a need to rejigger the roadmap, or tweak things so that they were focused on people’s sort of needs right now, compared to what their desires were prior to all of these things going on. The other thing that I think impacted this for us, is the fact that we were… We try to be very aware of people’s attention spans and what kind of content and information that they’re looking for now, versus what they might’ve been before and what they might in the future. So, in particular, I wouldn’t say I’m going day to day on tasks necessarily, but as a team, we definitely have gone from week to week to month to month. And then back to sort of our day to day, week to week, month to month back to like, we’re pretty much like one week at a time right now, roughly speaking. And… But that has a lot to do with planning because the information that comes in… The volume of different things has definitely dramatically changed in a lot of areas, at least for my businesses. [0:11:47] Steli Efti: Yeah, I agree. Now let’s bring up, maybe, one of the tension points that could be out there, which is, you know, depending on the size of your team and what you were planning to work on, and especially also what team members you have, and what they were planning to work on with their purposes. Sometimes there are these kinds of more longer term projects that, you know, you might’ve put on hold at the beginning of the pandemic, still on hold social unrest, but there’s like a mounting pressure. When can we resume this, right? Maybe they’ve been a big project to redo the website or redo your branding, or to reposition yourself in the market or to invest in some more exciting innovation on the product development side. Some of these more complex, bigger kind of projects that a lot of people have a commitment to. You put that on ice when the world is kind of first getting noticed on the pandemic, everybody gets that, then there’s social unrest holding off. But eventually there’s this internal pressure, I would assume, with many teams. Where some teams are just like, “We can’t hold off forever. Let’s keep working on these things that we know are important that we’re planning to work on”. How do you deal with that? Because the thing is, there’s one thing… One interesting question that people bring up is, “Well, what if this keeps happening now? Right? What if every two months, you know, there’s something else crazy going on?” I mean, 2020… In most years, you would not believe that that’s possible, but this year, I think nobody would make a strong argument that it would be impossible for us to see three more significant negative events in the world before- [crosstalk] [0:13:32] Hiten Shah: You know, that’s the funny thing. Who cares? I’m here right now, I don’t care. What I mean by that is, I don’t care right now because those things haven’t happened, and I can’t predict them. And if they do happen, by now with the third thing, you should have a way to adjust. And that’s really what this is about, is how do you adapt and how do you adjust? So I don’t think about that. And part of the reason is like, I might just be so used to the uncertainty in startups that like, this is just an extension of that. Where this uncertainty has kind of extended to not just my business life, but also my personal life and the lives of many other people. Pretty much everyone on the planet. I mean, we’re dealing with like things that go global really fast now. And so everyone ends up dealing with that. So I would say that like, if you’ve done a startup for a while, you just have to figure out how to embrace uncertainty in whatever ways that you’re best at and learn how to like, just think of it in other parts of your life. If you haven’t done this kind of thing and you’re dealing with it because, you know, you’re working corporate or, you know, are a freelancer or something, not quite kind of in the same level of uncertainty, then you already kind of know how to do it now. You know, I think it’s… You know, it’s obviously not great that these things have happened in the world cause they are negative. By any means, like, that you can think about them, they’re not good. They’re not things we desire. That being said, they have taught everybody how to deal with uncertainty in a way that typically you learn when you try to start something new. [0:15:16] Steli Efti: There you go. And one of the things you can learn when you start something new, is that you have to make decisions with imperfect data. You cannot [crosstalk 00:15:25]. [0:15:25] Hiten Shah: Very little info. [0:15:26] Steli Efti: Very little information. You cannot wait until you are a hundred percent certain that you’re going to be right. You have to try to be as insightful, as data-driven, as thoughtful as possible, but you have to make quick decisions. And then when you execute and the results aren’t there, you adjust, you change, you adapt. But you don’t just wait to get the perfect plan and a hundred percent certainty that this thing will work and it will work in exactly this way. And so I think that, in a time like this, you’re absolutely right. You can’t… We… There’s a quote, a beautiful quote that I can’t recall right now about like the worrying too… Like worrying about tomorrow is robbing us of our energy today, right? [0:16:03] Hiten Shah: Yep. [0:16:04] Steli Efti: It takes away all the energy to do shit today, right? Just to worry about for tomorrow. And then there’s this other… This Buddhist thing about like, you know, “Oh, you’re worried about something? Can you do something about it? If yes, why worry? If you can’t do something about it, well, why worry?” [0:16:22] Hiten Shah: That’s right. [0:16:23] Steli Efti: There’s no reason to worry. [0:16:24] Hiten Shah: That’s beautiful. [0:16:25] Steli Efti: If you think you can do something about it, that you shouldn’t worry, just do something about it. If you can’t do anything about it, what’s the point of worrying? You can’t do anything about it anyways. And so, I think this is the time where worrying is not helpful. Although, it’s very, I think, accessible and easy. Easy to do, and you just have to live your life today, as good as you can. And if tomorrow something crazy happens, we’re all in this together. You’ll figure something out, right? Just having the belief that you’ll figure a way around it. You’re just… And maybe, maybe sometime around this year, you’re going to have to change your plans more drastically, and nobody likes changing their plans drastically. Nobody. But that’s part of life, and especially part of startup life. So just creating that or adopting that mental flexibility to be like, “Even if we have just one week planned, maybe in the middle of the week, we’ll have to throw it away as the world changes”. That… If you can bring that lightness and that flexibility to the table, you know, I would assume it’s going to serve people really, really, really well because planning and worrying and then holding onto those plans and worries in a world that’s as volatile as this, is a recipe for disaster and for a lot of suffering. [0:17:37] Hiten Shah: Yep. If you’re normally worried about things, then just talk to someone who’s not like that, you know? And that can help you level set. Just to give you a thought kind of before we wrap this up. [0:17:49] Steli Efti: I love that. I love that. Find your most… Your least worrying, most optimistic, most adaptable friend or acquaintance and talk to them more often in 2020. [0:18:00] Hiten Shah: That’s right. [0:18:03] Steli Efti: I love it. All right. This is it from us for this episode. Stay safe, stay safe. We’ll talk very soon. [0:18:07] Hiten Shah: Yep. [0:18:08]The post 517: How to Plan in 2020? appeared first on The Startup Chat with Steli & Hiten.

Today on The Startup Chat, Steli and Hiten talk about the lack of mastery in inner work. As humans, we all are experiencing life differently, and these experiences shape who we are and mould us into what we are at any given time. Although some of us would love to master our shortcomings, it is an ongoing situation, and mastering inner work is the type of work that never ends. In today’s episode of the show, Steli and Hiten talk about how your strength can be your weakness, how inner work is the type of work that never ends, why you shouldn’t dehumanize your heroes and much more. Time Stamped Show Notes: 00:00 About today’s topic 00:48 Why this topic was chosen. 01:01 How your strength can be your weakness. 03:04 How inner work is the type of work that never ends. 04:05 How inner work can feel like a never-ending onion. 05:21 How what you are today will always keep changing. 06:22 Why you shouldn’t dehumanize your heroes. 07:12 How Jeff Bezos is a human. 08:47 Why there’s no mastery at the end of the tunnel. 09:51 How long it took for the Steli and Hiten to realise they were full of shit. 3 Key Points: There’s no mastery in inner work.Inner work is the type of work that never endsYour strength is your weakness. [0:00:01] Steli Efti: Hey everybody, this is Steli Efti. [0:00:02] Hiten Shah: And this is Hiten Shah. [0:00:04] Steli Efti: And today on The Startup Chat, we’re going to talk about the lack of mastery in inner work. So, here’s what I want to briefly chit-chat with you about and kind of unpack with you for the audience. Recently, I had a very intense kind of weekend session with a good friend of mine, where we did a lot of what I would call inner work, just very introspective work of what’s going on in our lives and what are the challenges? What are the limitations? What are possible blind spots? We had some very deep, very, very intense, very good and honest conversations with each other. Then there was one moment where my friend looked at me and was like, “Wow,” because I’d brought up something that I’ve just recently gotten to realize about myself and how surprising that was, because it didn’t fit my self-image at all. I was like, “I’m so surprised that I am this way.” It would have been- [crosstalk] [0:01:03] Hiten Shah: But I am. And I know. [0:01:04] Steli Efti: But I am. Now I know like, “Wow.” And then it was like, “Wow, I’m mind blown,” especially, I wouldn’t have expected you having this kind of a surprise revelation because you have such a master of inner work. And I was like, in that moment, my response was like… [0:01:19] Hiten Shah: Feel like that but not really. [0:01:20] Steli Efti: No, I’m like… I think I said verbatim and then I thought, “Oh, I should tweet this someday.” And then the world, it started exploding… [0:01:27] Hiten Shah: Wooh, yeah. [0:01:29] Steli Efti: So I’m just thinking about, I just kept it to myself. But he was like, “You’re such a master of inner work.” I’m like, “There’s no mastery in inner work. This isn’t mastery.” [0:01:36] Hiten Shah: None. Sorry. That’s good. That’s good. [0:01:39] Steli Efti: “This doesn’t exist. There’s nobody that has a black belt. You don’t remember how many books you read. I don’t remember how much I’ve analyzed.” [0:01:43] Hiten Shah: No. No. No. No. [0:01:44] Steli Efti: “You’ll never figure the shit out.” And I think that that’s what I wanted to talk about a little bit, because I think… [0:01:53] Hiten Shah: That’s great. Great topic. [0:01:54] Steli Efti: I see this with myself a lot, Hiten. I see this with some of my smartest, wisest, most successful friends. Your strength is your weakness. The thing that you spent a lot of time around… [0:02:13] Hiten Shah: Absolutely. [0:02:13] Steli Efti: Right? Is now cleaning a false sense of confidence. “Oh, I know this topic. Oh, I know myself in this way. Oh, I’ve done the work. I got the black belt. I’ve put in the years. I’ve accomplished mastery in whatever, in understanding myself or human psychology, or whatever, whatever, whatever.” And then it’s like the moment you believe that is the day that you’re a white belt again, and you’re starting to make all these mistakes and your viewpoint is distorted and you mess up. You really mess up. And so I wanted to talk about that idea that inner work is the type of work that never ends. It just never, ever ends. If you’re curious enough and if you’re honest and open enough, you should consistently get these holy shit surprise moments where you’re like, “I can’t believe this is me. How could I miss this?” [0:03:13] Hiten Shah: Yeah. [0:03:13] Steli Efti: “For 40 years, I’ve been analyzing myself. And I just now realized that this is who I am. And this is why I do certain things the way I do them, or this is how I really feel about certain things. There’s no stopping. There’s no stopping to that. Which I think is a very uncomfortable feeling because we all like… We’re all lazy in a way where we like the idea that if we put a lot of effort in something, we’ll get really good at it. And then we can try… [crosstalk] [0:03:37] Hiten Shah: Well, it’s hard to see the progress. That’s part of it, right? [0:03:42] Steli Efti: Yeah. Yeah. [0:03:42] Hiten Shah: So the analogy that many people use for this is like the idea that you’re peeling an onion. [0:03:47] Steli Efti: Yeah. [0:03:48] Hiten Shah: There’s always another, it is a never ending onion. There’s always another layer underneath that you’re missing until you peel the existing one. And that those moments are fantastic. There is no mastery here, no matter who you are. And there are some people that kind of put it out there in a way as if they have mastered it or they appear to have mastered it. And you usually don’t know unless you know them, but they haven’t. [0:04:24] Steli Efti: Yeah. [0:04:24] Hiten Shah: I’ll pick on Naval for that. [0:04:28] Steli Efti: Okay. [0:04:29] Hiten Shah: I don’t think… I’ve never heard him say he’s mastered it. [0:04:31] Steli Efti: Yeah. [0:04:31] Hiten Shah: But the way he espouses philosophy, modern philosophy, it makes you kind of think like he has. And having mastered some of the things that I know he hasn’t… I know he hasn’t. Just when I look at some of those tweets, I’m like, “Yeah, okay. You’re working through your own version of this.” [0:04:52] Steli Efti: Yeah. [0:04:52] Hiten Shah: I think one I find particularly interesting is how many people are doing his, he doesn’t even call it a challenge, but how many people are doing his meditation challenge. And a lot of that has to do with just how confident, how competently someone’s speaking. [0:05:06] Steli Efti: Yeah. [0:05:07] Hiten Shah: That makes you feel like they mastered it. So I bet your friend probably thought you had mastery because you speak really confidently. [0:05:13] Steli Efti: Yeah. Yeah, I do. [0:05:14] Hiten Shah: And so does Naval, right? Extremely competently, like he knows all the answers and he gives you that feeling and vibe. And I know you do that too. And I think that has a lot to do with people thinking you have it all figured out. Nobody really has it all figured out. And I’ve said this a lot. I keep saying, I don’t think anyone knows any. [0:05:35] Steli Efti: No. [0:05:35] Hiten Shah: And what you know, there’s so much more to know. And what you know is what you know today. What you are is what you are today. And that can easily change. And that changeability, that flexibility, I think, is the mastery itself. That even that openness to know that I don’t know anything, as much as I either think I know or I’ve been through, or I know, there’s so much more to know, and there’s so much more that’s going to happen and so much of it in unexpected ways. A lot of these learnings also come in the weirdest ways. I got to say that because the way that you’re just really… That’s what it took for me to figure that out. Oh no. [0:06:13] Steli Efti: Yeah. I think this is a really important point though that you’re highlighting. I feel like we have… For all that we do, I think we both put a lot of effort in every exchange that we have with people and try to stress that point that we’re full of shit and we don’t know. Nobody else knows either. I think that we are all… I think we talked about this in an episode where we said, “Don’t dehumanize your heroes,” right? Where you think that there’s people that figured out life and are superhuman in the way they live life. And so you create all this stress on trying to be like them, but if you really knew them, you’d know that yeah, they might be a bit better at certain things, a bit more experienced in certain areas, but they’re so full of shit. Maybe in some areas where you mastered life, they’re like little children, right? And you just don’t want- [0:07:08] Hiten Shah: Yeah. Yeah. [0:07:10] Steli Efti: To me, one of my favorite example recently had always been Jeff Bezos because I admire him as a founder and CEO. I think he’s one of the, if not the best, CEO Founder of our job… [0:07:25] Hiten Shah: That we have today, yeah. [0:07:26] Steli Efti: That we have for sure. But for them, when the whole affair thing and divorce thing broke out… [0:07:32] Hiten Shah: It humanized him. [0:07:33] Steli Efti: It humanized it in a way where I was telling people, “Listen, even if this all isn’t right, we don’t really know everything that’s going on.” But if you look at some of the behavior of somebody like that, when it comes to the opposite sex, right? Or an affair or something, you can see a… If you read those text messages, you can see a more insecure little teenager, not like a super wise… [0:07:57] Hiten Shah: That’s right. [crosstalk] [0:07:58] Steli Efti: Kind of a billionaire that is a master of industries. You see a little teenager who is in love and horny and doesn’t know how to deal with both of these things. [0:08:10] Hiten Shah: Yeah. [0:08:11] Steli Efti: And that makes perfect sense. If you have a super brain like this person who might very early focused on using your brain and you haven’t developed other areas of your life, and maybe now is going through a phase where he’s discovering these and he’s like, “Oh my God, I have all these feelings in my body. And I’m interested in this woman or whatever.” And all of a sudden, he’s sending dick pics around like a little child, right? Not as wise, not the master of industry, not writing like a super genius, but writing like a giddy little boy, right? And that doesn’t mean that he’s dumb. That doesn’t mean that everything he’s done is nothing. Just means he’s a human. He’s a human who might have flaws. If I have flaws on areas… [crosstalk] [0:08:49] Hiten Shah: Maybe just to feel, yeah. [0:08:51] Steli Efti: And this is so true for everybody. And I feel like it’s so important, especially with people that are listening to us, podcasts like these “experts” like us where, I think, if we can misspell this idea that there’s mastery at the end of the tunnel, that there’s some kind of a different version of life, if you only accomplish X… Oh, if I only… Yeah, at that successful startup, if I only make a million… On a stage, if I only be invited to be interviewed on big podcast… If I only whatever… Then I’m going to be a different type of human. I’m going to have mastery over some of these things that consist of human life. And then I’m not going to have to feel so overwhelmed at times, so so difficult. I think that chase is a heartbreaking one because then you accomplish these things, you don’t feel that different or you have not now figured out life in its entirety, and now you feel like a fraud and you’re trying to hide that fact, right? Now, you’re trying to maybe convince yourself that you have figured everything out because I should have, because now I’m already a very successful farmer. And that sets people down a path that is, I think, heartbreaking and wasteful and doesn’t have that much beauty versus… I don’t know when it happened. Well, let me ask you before we wrap up this episode. Did you always knew how full of shit you were? Because it took me a minute. But did you have a moment where you really realized that? I’m just curious, how the journey was for you? [0:10:31] Hiten Shah: I think underneath the surface, I always had this belief that everybody’s full of shit so that made it easier for me to believe I’m full of shit too. But that was underneath, right? So no, this was a journey, but I always… The one thing about me is, I truly think everyone’s full of shit. Like literally, they don’t know what they’re saying. They just know what they’re saying right now, right? They just know what they know right now. They don’t really know much else. And I just have a strong belief towards that. Right or wrong, whether you agree or not, that’s just what I believe. And so that was there, but then kind of putting it on myself and being like a mindful of shit, that I think that’s a harder one. And that took longer to really just come up with, but it was easier just because I do have this attitude that I think everyone’s full of shit. There’s such limit, like everyone just has their own experiences. They’re limited. They’re different. And you don’t get along with everyone, right? You’re just not supposed to. That’s not what this is, this kind of living is about. It’s about making decisions, about having opinions. It’s about changing. It’s about evolving. So, yeah, I feel like there’s a lot of people out there that come across like they have it together or come across like they don’t. And a lot of this… I think one of the biggest things, and I know this is really weird of a word to say on this, but I feel like it made me less judgemental by being judgmental about everybody, if that makes sense, right? Because it just made me… It just like, “Oh yeah. That person. That’s just how they feel right now. That’s just their strong opinion right now.” And I don’t have to agree with it. I think part of it is also the freedom to not to disagree. And that was a big part of it for me. But that was me. I don’t know other people’s sort of experiences with this sort of concept. I just know mine, which is this belief. [0:12:31] Steli Efti: Everybody’s full of shit. I love that. There’s one of the things I think that connects us because I am very much on board with it… Religion. [0:12:39] Hiten Shah: [crosstalk 00:00:12:40]. [0:12:39] Steli Efti: But it happened later in life for me. [0:12:42] Hiten Shah: Yeah. [0:12:42] Steli Efti: I do think that, growing up, I definitely had this hope. There are people that figure this shit out and I want to be part of that group and I didn’t, so I was like, I’m just trying… [Crosstalk] [0:12:52] Hiten Shah: Right. Right. Yeah, but… [0:12:54] Steli Efti: Trying to study who are these people? What the fuck did they do? [0:12:58] Hiten Shah: I was going to say, yeah, based on your upbringing and that bookstore. Yeah. That’s kind of expected. I wouldn’t have expected anything else. [0:13:09] Steli Efti: And then, it was a gradual process where I started being surrounded by some people that were very successful, thankfully, very early, financially successful, very early. [0:13:18] Hiten Shah: Yeah. [0:13:18] Steli Efti: And then I was like, “Wait a second. These people are full of shit.” [0:13:21] Hiten Shah: Yeah, they just know what they know. [0:13:24] Steli Efti: And then I were like, “Hey. Yeah, I’m full of shit too. Ha.” And that started the journey of realizing, “No, there’s nobody that figured that shit out. We’re all full of shit.” All right. So there’s many ways to do this. What’s the right way for you? But it took me a minute to get there, for sure. [0:13:40] Hiten Shah: Okay. [0:13:40] Steli Efti: All right. Well, there is no mastery inner work, but inner work never ends so… [0:13:48] Hiten Shah: Nope. [0:13:48] Steli Efti: We, for sure, will try to be part of your journey. [0:13:53] Hiten Shah: Yeah. [0:13:53] Steli Efti: Stay safe. Stay saint. And we will hear you very soon. [0:13:59] Hiten Shah: Talk to you later. [0:13:59] The post 516: There’s No Mastery in Inner Work appeared first on The Startup Chat with Steli & Hiten.

In today’s episode of The Startup Chat, Steli and Hiten talk about “Should Have Done This Earlier”. Business comes with lots of challenges. Sometimes we figure out the solution to a challenge and, depending on how you look at it, might feel relieved about figuring it out or frustration about not doing so sooner. In this episode, Steli and Hiten talk about why you shouldn’t focus on the negative side of things, the benefits of having a positive outlook on things why working on our attitudes towards ourselves can be a game-changer and much more. Time Stamped Show Notes: 00:00 About the topic of today’s episode 00:31 Why this topic was chosen. 01:07 Why Hiten tweeted about today topic. 02:32 How there are different ways to look at a lightbulb moment. 03:52 How what you focus on changes how you look at different situations. 04:56 Why how you feel whenever you figure out something challenging doesn’t matter. 05:15 Why you shouldn’t focus on the negative side of things. 06:54 Why you shouldn’t set conditions for yourself. 07:00 The benefits of having a positive outlook on things. 09:53 Why working on our attitudes towards ourselves can be a game-changer. 3 Key Points: If you feel that you were dumber a year ago, you’re growing.Not every day is going to be the same.What you focus on a situation, changes how you look at it. [0:00:01] Steli Efti: Hey everybody, this is Steli Efti. [0:00:03] Hiten Shah: And this is Hiten Shah. [0:00:05] Steli Efti: And today on the Startup Chat, we’re going to talk about, this is another tweet episode. This is a new tradition we have, where Steli Efti reads Hiten’s tweets and once in a while thinks, ha, this is both very wise and kind of curious, and there’s something here that we should probably unpack for the audience on the Startup Chat. So I’m going to read the tweet that you posted recently Hiten, and then I’m going to ask you what prompted it, and we’ll just see what unfolds. [0:00:34] Hiten Shah: Sounds good. [0:00:34] Steli Efti: So here’s the tweet. “Should have done this earlier. I should have done this earlier. A statement full of frustration and relief at the same time.” All right. So what made you tweet this? [0:00:51] Hiten Shah: Yeah, it’s one of those things that’s related to another thing that I really kind of have funny feelings about. And that thing is this idea that if you felt like you were dumber a year ago, you know you’re growing. Or you felt dumb for some opinion you had, or thought you had or think you did a year ago or whatever, you’re growing. So it’s very similar to that where it’s like, sometimes you just have those moments and this is very, it’s personal life and work and business, but you have those moments where you’re like, “Oh, should have done this earlier.” And sometimes it’s just an idea that you have, and you’re like, “Crap, that’s just the one.” Or for like, let’s say, a marketing channel or something like that, that you just didn’t think of then all of a sudden you did, just to give a very simple example. Or it’s something that you just did and you’re like, “Oh, I should have done that earlier.” So it’s kind of like this feeling that I get sometimes. And I’m frustrated because I wish I would’ve figured it out earlier, but I’m also very relieved because I figured it out. I finally figured it out. I got it. All right, cool. So it was one of those moments where I felt that and felt like I had to share just to release it and get over myself. So that was it. It was just that. [0:02:20] Steli Efti: You know, what’s funny is that, I should have done this earlier, there’s many flavors of this, right? [0:02:26] Hiten Shah: Yeah. [0:02:26] Steli Efti: And there is one that is more regretful… [0:02:30] Hiten Shah: Yes. [0:02:31] Steli Efti: … And then there is a version of this that’s just more relieved. Like I should’ve done this earlier, but the underlying energy is, I’m happy I’ve done it now, right? I’m happy… [0:02:42] Hiten Shah: Yes. [0:02:43] Steli Efti: Like this is the Chinese proverb of, “20 years ago was the best time to plant a tree, the second best time is today,” or something like that. It’s like, I didn’t get it done, but thank God I got it done now. Right? But then there’s also the, I didn’t get it done then. Yeah, I got it now, but why didn’t I get it done then? I think that the difference between the two is that one is focused on the past versus the other one is focused on the present. [0:03:10] Hiten Shah: Definitely. [0:03:10] Steli Efti: And if you highlight away the past higher, then there’s more regret there. Why didn’t I do this earlier? Fuck! Versus if you highlight the present, you’re like, should’ve done this, earlier, but phew, thank God I’ve done it now. So thank God now it’s done, because I know it could very easily been another X amount of time before I would have done it, right? [0:03:35] Hiten Shah: Yeah. [0:03:35] Steli Efti: So I’m thankful and grateful that now it’s done. And so it’s interesting. It’s the same statement, could be the same situation, but the thing you focus on changes the way you feel about it, and then completely changes the energy around it. It’s sad in a way, because oftentimes, I think we all have, especially as founders, a lot of, we should have done this earlier moments, right? When you do something that now really clicks or works and it’s not the first time you thought of it, it’s not the first time it came up and you’re like, “Ah, if we’d only done it a bit earlier.” But the thing you focus on really changes that moment from a celebration to almost like it almost doesn’t matter. You’re like, we’ve done this so late, it’s so terrible. It doesn’t almost matter that we’ve got it done. And there’s just no joy in it. You get zero benefits from having it done. [0:04:36] Hiten Shah: Yeah. [0:04:36] Steli Efti: You’re just so bummed out you didn’t do this earlier that you’re like, “Ah, yeah we got it done, but who cares? We should have done it earlier.” And now on a pure materialistic point of view, it doesn’t matter, it was done. How you feel about it shouldn’t have- [0:04:50] Hiten Shah: It got done. Yeah. [0:04:51] Steli Efti: It got done, so how you feel about it doesn’t matter, but it matters a shit ton because the way you feel now will determine what you’ll do next, right? [0:05:01] Hiten Shah: That’s right. That’s right. [0:05:01] Steli Efti: And if you’re totally bummed out, frustrated and remorseful, or heartbroken about something, chances are you’re not going to get a lot of things done next, right? Chances are you’re not going to feel any energy to do more. You’re just going to feel like, “What’s the fucking point? Yeah, I got this done, but I should… [0:05:22] Hiten Shah: Totally right. [0:05:22] Steli Efti: … Have done this a year ago. What is the point of even going on when we’re this late?” And now I guarantee that with that energy, the next thing you do is probably not much, you’re not going to do anything versus the other. In the other scenario, you get it done. It’s as late, you’ve missed out as much, but you’re now excited. You celebrate it, the moment, and you’re like, “What else can I get done that I should’ve done? What is the other thing we should do, that has been a good idea a year ago?” You are energized. And so the way you feel doesn’t matter for the thing you’ve just got done, but it matters a tremendous amount for what you’re going to do next. [0:06:04] Hiten Shah: Yeah. Absolutely. [0:06:05] Steli Efti: Does it matter for you? I’m curious, is it a general attitude thing? Do you find yourself mostly being, like when I got something done that I should have done earlier, kind of relieved and happy about it in the moment and kind of gives me the boost to keep going? Or is it, does it depend on what it is similarly? It’s a big thing, if it’s a small thing. [0:06:27] Hiten Shah: [crosstalk] I’m trying to make it so it doesn’t. I’m trying to make it… [0:06:30] Steli Efti: Nice. [0:06:30] Hiten Shah: … So it doesn’t… [0:06:30] Steli Efti: Nice. [0:06:31] Hiten Shah: … Depend on it, right? [0:06:31] Steli Efti: Yeah, yeah. [0:06:31] Hiten Shah: Like really? It doesn’t really matter, because like I’m trying to make it so it doesn’t matter. Because I don’t know. We haven’t really talked about this specifically, but we set conditions for ourselves and that’s a condition that you’re setting on yourself and you’re kind of setting yourself up for failure, in my opinion, if you start getting negative with yourself about these types of things. And it’s easy to do for a lot of us. And so I’d rather have a much more optimistic, positive outlook. And obviously, you can assume that I’ll analyze the thing, not to death, but enough to know where I can do better. At least my perception of where I can do better, even if it’s not like totally reality. But yeah, I try my best, not to have an attitude where I get down on myself, because I think, especially as you’re working on some of your own things, like it’s a typical thing, not every day is going to be the same and some days are going to be really bad. And sometimes the world is just bad, like right now, that is the word, the world is bad. It’s subjectively that. I don’t think very many people can say, it’s good. I wouldn’t imagine anybody doing that. I’m sure there are people, but that’s not my people. But anyway, most people would consider what’s going on right now bad. And it’s easy to get caught up in that and lose sight of anything good. And yeah, I think this is a constant feeling. The more you get used to trying to do new things and create things from very little, which is the definition of a startup. I would say it’s almost the definition of business at this point, you’re going to have all kinds of feelings come up. You’re going to have all kinds of things come up where you’re like, “Crap. I wish I knew that. I wish I had talked to that person. I wish I would have learned that. I wish we would have done that earlier.” And the moment I had was simply like, there’s something that just wasn’t done right. And I did a good job communicating it to the people involved in a way where I was very thoughtful about making sure that nobody took it personally, because it really wasn’t personal. But something just wasn’t done right by us as a team, as a company. And it wasn’t like a massive failure, just the execution thing. It wasn’t like it didn’t hurt anyone, it hasn’t been published or shipped or whatever yet, but I just didn’t feel good about it. And I expressed it. And then 24 hours later, I had a better plan. And that’s actually what this tweet was about. I just had a better plan all of a sudden and I was like, “Oh, I feel a lot of relief and I feel a little frustrated, maybe a lot frustrated about just not figuring it out earlier.” It’s just this feeling that you could have just figured it out earlier and imagine what could happen. But at the same time, the journey is a journey, right? And that there’s no real way to hack the journey or make the journey happen faster, or building something or getting where you want to get to. And so that’s really where it came from, for me, was just something that we, as a team did pretty poorly, in my opinion, and should be doing better. But then that completely was a transformative thing for me this time, where I have a plan now. And the plan is almost 100 times better than how we had been approaching a bunch of things. [0:10:07] Steli Efti: Love it. I love it. All right. So I think we are all going through these moments, and I think working on the one little thing that can make all the difference, which is our attitude towards ourselves… [0:10:21] Hiten Shah: Yes. [0:10:21] Steli Efti: … And what we do and how we do things… [0:10:22] Hiten Shah: Absolutely. [0:10:23] Steli Efti: … Working on that can be a game changer on how much energy you create within your days for your victories and your failures, or how much energy you cost yourself and eventually, how will you be able to get done, because you’re just beating up on yourself all day long. So I love that. I love the, “Ha should’ve done this earlier.” Like I love that tonality around this, “Ha, could have been better, but I’ve done it now. This is good.” [0:10:49] Hiten Shah: Yeah. [0:10:49] Steli Efti: It’s doing- [0:10:50] Hiten Shah: That’s why we use the word should too. It’s definitely yeah. Great purpose. Well, it totally right. [0:10:55] Steli Efti: All right. Well, this is it for us for this episode. We wish you nothing, but the best. Stay safe. Stay sane. We’ll hear you very soon. [0:11:04] Hiten Shah: Yeah. [0:11:04]The post 515: “Should Have Done This Earlier” appeared first on The Startup Chat with Steli & Hiten.

In today’s episode of The Startup Chat, Steli and Hiten talk about how to keep your sanity in 2020. With all that is going on in the world at the moment, the COVID-19 epidemic and the current police brutality protests going on around the world, it’s really difficult to stay composed and not let it all affect your mental health negatively. In this week’s episode, Steli and Hiten talk about things they are doing to stay sane at the moment, how nobody really knows how to feel right now, how information overload could be a problem right now and much more. Time Stamped Show Notes: 00:00 About today’s topic. 00:23 Why this topic was chosen. 01:58 How Hiten is keeping his sanity right now. 02:36 The difference between luck and gratitude. 03:00 How nobody really knows how to feel right now. 03:12 How information overload could be a problem right now. 04:06 One really unique thing about these times. 05:50 How Steli is keeping his sanity right now. 07:19 One reason why this current situation is so intense. 09:07 How this current situation is hitting a nerve with a lot of people. 3 Key Points: This year is something else!These are unusual timesI just feel really lucky.Nobody really knows how to feel. [0:00:01] Steli Efti: Hey everybody, this is Steli Efti. [0:00:03] Hiten Shah: And this is Hiten Shah. [0:00:05] Steli Efti: And today on the Startup Chat we’re going to talk about how to keep your sanity in 2020, how to be a founder during these times, how to be a human these times. Man, this year is something else, and I’m sure we’re not the only… Lots of people are going through a lot of things right now. I felt like typically we’re known for super short, super sharp, very tactical and practical episodes, but these are unusual times so maybe they call for an unusual Startup Chat episode. I felt like it might make sense for us to just check, how do we deal with this? How do we think about all the insanity that’s going on in the world? Maybe we do have a few things to share with our listeners that are going to be helpful or if not, maybe that in and of itself gives some comfort that not even the two of us know how to deal with this. [0:01:02] Hiten Shah: That’s right. [0:01:03] Steli Efti: So let me ask you, the first big wave was obviously the global pandemic and COVID, now we’re going through this wave of worldwide demonstrations and rights, peaceful protests kicked off by police brutality, but it’s maybe even bigger than just that. There’s a lot of different things that are in the mix that are going on right now. How have the last two, three weeks been for you, and for your team, and your company? Has it been different than the first COVID wave of craziness, and how do you cope? How do you keep your sanity during all of this right now? [0:01:50] Hiten Shah: Yeah. For me, I just feel really lucky and I think I have, at this point, an unlimited number of reasons why, and so I couldn’t even cover them. I think that’s how I deal with this, I just realize where I’m lucky and make sure that I don’t lose sight of that regardless of what else is going on for other people because that’s really helpful. I think we might’ve talked about this a little bit, but I’ve been really wrapping my head around for myself, the difference between luck and gratitude. I think we talked about that a little bit a couple of times at least, and for me, that’s the thing that helps the most is this idea of just remembering how lucky I am. If I have to, reminding other people whether it’s in my family or people around me, when they’re feeling sad or feeling the collective situation in whatever ways that they might be feeling it because one of the things about this is nobody really knows how to feel. Nobody knows how to act. We just don’t know. There’s a lot of combined things going on, a lot of opinions, a lot of information. I think the biggest risk is information overload, that’s what I’m noticing with people around me. In terms of my companies and teams and stuff, we keep those teams very small. That’s how we’ve always operated, regardless of what the goal is. That makes it so that there are less challenges on the teams for two reasons. One, they’re small, and small meaning less than 20 people, and two, they’re all remote, just like your team. That distributes literally any world situation or any local situation, really distributes it. The thing about what’s going on right now that I’m noticing and that I find very unique is that there are protests all over the world now. All over the world over something that started in the U.S. In one city, and obviously there’s a video and everything, but that is incredible. I don’t think I’ve ever noticed anything like that, where we’ve taken something that happened to a single country, in a single State, isolated basically in a single State, and has spread globally and caused this amount of unrest. That’s really what this is, this is some kind of unrest. People are not able to rest is what I mean, in case someone takes it the wrong way. That’s another thing, right? People are going to take things the wrong way right now just because, and that’s okay. Everybody should just do their best. I just did that right there. I was like, “You know, that might not be the right word, but that’s the word I’m using. Sorry.” I usually don’t do that, I don’t caveat most things I say because I try to be as balanced as I can. So, those are my off the cuff thoughts. I know you’re across the world, and so I’d love to hear what you’re experiencing, and obviously you have a larger team. I think, what? You folks are like 50 plus people? [0:05:33] Steli Efti: Yeah, yeah. It’s interesting, I think that I want to go back later to this lucky point a little bit. I love it so much that I want to understand even better how you do it, how you practice it, but I- [0:05:46] Hiten Shah: I’ve been working on it, so happy to talk about it. It’s something I’m working on, so yes. [0:05:51] Steli Efti: For me, it’s interesting, there’s a couple of things that I’ve noticed. One, I’ve noticed I’ve never… There was a time at the beginning of COVID I was super glad to be on Twitter. I was like, there’s these very specific experts, there’s these specific people on the ground in China, they’re sharing these facts. There’s some arguments, but there’s information that I find useful, and although I would invest a lot of time into it, it felt like I’m gaining something from the experience. The experience couldn’t be more different right now. I can’t be on Twitter for more than like a minute at a time, and then I’m just like, I need to leave this place because it’s just too much. It’s a lot of brutality, there’s a lot of negativity, there’s a lot of arguing. It’s just a different level of charged environment. I want to go on social media to get a little bit of information what’s going on in the world, but I’ve never felt- [0:07:05] Hiten Shah: Can I give my explanation about this? [0:07:08] Steli Efti: Yeah. [0:07:09] Hiten Shah: Maybe it would just lead to some conversation here that’s interesting. I have a few different people who talked to me about this that are very empathetic, and this is my thesis. I think that normally… So, let’s say the COVID situation on Twitter, there were dopamine hits from it. Your pleasure center and all that, big time. With the current protests and all the videos, and the brutality and everything that we’re seeing, it’s much different. I think what we’re hitting is it’s hitting our adrenaline because when we watch these things, even when we read about them, we can almost imagine selves there and I think it produces a flight or fight response. And so, you’re constantly in this fight or flight response, even if you’re not a protester and you’re not at the protest, and you’re watching it and you’re watching the brutality, and you’re watching even people just generally marching peacefully, it just never really seems peaceful if that makes sense. Not that it isn’t, it just has this energy to it. My theory is most things are a dopamine hit on social media, this is hitting adrenaline, and we run out of adrenalin. We get tired, and then cranky, and all kinds of angry, and all kinds of things. Anyway, please continue, but that was my- [0:08:42] Steli Efti: Yeah. Yeah, that makes perfect sense. I’ve seen a number of people that they’re not in the U.S. And they’re not a person of color, they’re not in the group that’s most impacted by this, and then I would notice how they would social media themselves into a rage. They’re really affected by this in some way that I’m like, this can’t be explained with a direct line from event, cause and effect. There’s something else. [0:09:23] Hiten Shah: And then imagine if you’re seeing basically people that are your color, and so that probably explains a lot of people’s messages when you think about it as adrenaline, because adrenaline is a beast of a hormone and drug. If you want to call it drug. [0:09:44] Steli Efti: Yeah, it’s crazy. I think, and unfortunately again, this is one of those situations where I find there’s very little actual conversation. There’s very little like exchange of ideas. There’s very little trying to understand. I feel like the situation is just very charged up. I think that people have been through a lot over the last couple of months; internal stress, anxiety, uncertainty, and this is just hitting a nerve and so the people lash out in very strong ways. In the mix there’s some beauty in there as well, there’s a lot of important things that are going on, but there’s a lot. The writers within the peaceful protestors, and then the police in the mix of everything, and then you see people arguing the side of the… It’s like that quote, I don’t know who said that, where it’s like somebody will not understand an idea if their salary is dependent on not understanding an idea, [inaudible] some facts or something. Some people will take this as, “See? Nobody ever believed us. Police is corrupt, we need to change the system.” And then there’s the other side of this like, “See? And you people were telling us we shouldn’t have guns. Look at all these riots, I need my guns, and we need our guns to protect ourselves from police and military.” And then there’s the other people like, “See?” There’s no actual, “Wow, I’m learning something new. Maybe I should change my mind,” or “Maybe there’s an interesting…” [0:11:30] Hiten Shah: No, there’s none of that. [0:11:31] Steli Efti: There’s none of that. It’s just whatever opinions of whatever group you#re a part of three months ago, six months ago. You’re just now more violently in that group, and more righteously in that group, and more believing that the other group needs a beating in some way, either physical or metaphysical or just metaphorically speaking. That creates a very charged up environment. It’s also interesting that you see people, just to bring it back to founders and start-ups and all that, it’s so interesting some of the postings that I saw early on of people trying to be supportive and writing something supporting the social cause would get beat downs in the comments. It would just be like, here’s a picture of you being white and here’s a picture of your children being white, and then here’s a picture of your team of six people and there’s not a personal of color. They’re just destroying these people. And then some other people would share support and it would be beautiful responses and encouragement. It just the wild, Wild West, but a lot of charged emotions. Maybe also a lot of adrenaline. I think that that captures it really, really well, and you can only have so much in some sane way. For me, I don’t know, you are actually a pretty insane power user nonetheless, when it comes to Twitter you got your black belt and all that. I’ve always been just a blue belt at best, and never been using Twitter as much, as good as using the medium and engaging with the community on there. What I find myself is, I find myself using social media less than ever before. I’m spending very little time on it. The amount of good information I get, or the amount of things that I’m like, “Oh, this makes me smarter. This is something I should know. I’m glad I read this,” just isn’t happening right now for me. It’s just I think recognizing that, because I think that some people don’t have that sensitivity or I may be am particularly sensitive towards that right now, and I could easily see somebody spending hours and hours and hours just on these Twitter tirades raging themselves up to something that’s like, is this really helping if you sit in your living room reading these things for three, four hours and then being in a rage? How does that help? What do you do now? It’s very different from wanting to take action or support or trying to make change, it’s just like reading, watching these videos one after the other, and just getting one adrenaline hit after the other. I don’t see how that’s going to help anybody do anything better, help anybody else do anything better, and how that’s going to help people to be functional. I’ve had a couple of friends of mine that are not living in the U.S., not a person of color, that were telling me that this has been more stressful for them than COVID, and that the last two weeks they’ve basically not been able to do anything. Zero productivity, zero able to get anything done. I get it, but how do you get into a better place one day at a time, one step at a time? How is this person in some random place in Europe so outraged and so sucked into this that now they’ve not done any work for two weeks? How’s this going to help anybody? For me, one thing is limiting my social media exposure. That’s been one thing. Trying to be on top, being very selective at a few people that are… I just go to certain people’s timeline, to be honest, versus just my own because I don’t trust Twitter and what they want to put in my timeline. Just got to a handful of people and I’m like, “What are they tweeting? What are they sharing? Let me take a quick look at that.” And then I’m out of there. That’s one thing that’s helping me. Are you spending as much time as you used to? And if so, how do you do that with getting- [0:15:29] Hiten Shah: Yeah. For me, no, I’m not. I’m spending a lot less time on Twitter than I ever have, like ever. It’s because I don’t know what to say. For me it’s more like, I don’t know what to say. I can see the stuff and it impacts me too, so I stopped watching any of those videos or anything that was coming out for the most part. I think Instagram has been a little more useful in some areas around this just because there’s some accounts that I trust to share videos and things like that and I feel like I can consume that and be okay personally. Overall my consumption’s gone down to less, my creation of content on there has gone down quite a bit too for the moment. I don’t know what to say and every time I go on there, I don’t necessarily see too much of the positivity, plus I don’t think I should. People have things that they have to say, and they should say them. I don’t have anything to add to the majority of that conversation at the moment. I think that’s where my head is, that’s what I’ve been doing. [0:16:55] Steli Efti: What would we tell… I know that we stopped any kind of social posting sharing this week from a company perspective, but I wonder if it were a founder of earlier stage start-up and I’m trying to do email outreach and calling outreach, I remember a couple of months ago I would tell people, keep doing that. Even with COVID you can’t stop communicating, you have to be thoughtful and mindful. Can’t be tone deaf, but you can’t just stop living and breathing, you have to keep trying to sell your service and your service is still valuable today for people. Now, I haven’t gotten that question recently, but I wonder if I was a founder now and I was trying to sell, it’s even harder now. If you email certain people about commerce that are in that rage mode or in that mode where they feel very upset about what’s going on in the world, and it’s hard to pinpoint where in the world because people all over the world are incredibly upset. You can get very strong negative responses if you’re trying to do “business” right now or trying to run your start-up and grow it, but you can’t also not do anything. What would you advise to somebody that’s wondering, should I be writing [inaudible 00:18:24]? Should I be still trying to close deals for my new software that I’m trying to get up and running? Or should I just lay low for a week or two, and then wait and see before I start trying to reengaging in the market? [0:18:38] Hiten Shah: Yeah. Typically, my advice on that right now, no one’s asked me either, is to wait and see. It looks like next week there’s going to be some… We’re about two-ish weeks into this, these protests and things, maybe a little bit more, but it looks like next week things seem like they might be getting a little bit normalized unfortunately, or fortunately, however you want to look at it. I’m not sure how to look at that, but normalized in the sense of, there seems to be less violence. [0:19:25] Steli Efti: Yeah, it’s interesting. This is something that I would agree with, and this is the first time in the five, six years that we’re doing this podcast that I would ever tell somebody, “Take it easy this week, just wait and see.” I had to do that internally a couple of times, but yeah, that’s interesting. Let’s go to the lucky part because for me, in terms of keeping my sanity, and I think we talked about it before in some of the other episodes that we had this year, it’s about trying to be as informed as I can, but understand that if there’s something I can do something about, there’s no reason to worry about it. If there’s something I can’t do anything about, there’s no reason to worry about it. That the old Buddhist wisdom, there’s certain things in the world that are going on there’s nothing I can do about that. So, there’s no benefit of me worrying about these things. Trying to ask myself, what can I impact? And let’s just focus on that. Let’s try to do the best I can today, and take one step at a time, and let’s see. Things are so unpredictable it doesn’t make sense to worry about the future because you just don’t know what kind of future will unfold, so you just have to take it one day at a time and just be adaptable and be like, “Okay, this is the new reality. Let me adapt to it.” One thing that I’ve seen that I would recommend people fight as an instinct, and this is a unique position where I’m at, this is so interesting. We’ve talked about this before, where I’ll talk to my friends in the U.S. And they’ll be like, “Europe is a shit show.” And then I talk to people in Europe and they’re like, “Thank God you’re not in the U.S., the U.S. Is a shit show.” And I’m like, “No matter where people are, they feel like…” We all have these strong biases and beliefs that we’re just trying to find, maybe in stressful times even more than before, we’re trying to find proof that the world works the way we want it to. I remember the couple of days ago was shared a more critical article with a friend of mine in the U.S. About some of the potential future scenarios, politically speaking, and then he was like, “Oh, this article is bullshit. The job numbers are great already, and protests are down, and in a month we’re going to be saying COVID was overblown and then everything will be forgotten.” I hope he’s right. It’s not that I don’t want all that to be true, but I was like, this seems like too much of an opinion than existed throughout all this time and never changes no matter what the facts are. This seems too biased of an opinion versus keeping a little bit of a flexible open mind of, I hope things are going to get better, but who knows. Versus a, I knew everything was going to get better, the job numbers are good. It’s like, just chill. Let’s wait and see if things are really going to get better. And so that will be my biggest recommendation I think to anybody, but especially founders right now is take a wait and see approach. Fight your own bias of wanting certain things to be true. Oh, things are fine here in Europe. Things are fine in the U.S. Things are fine in this coast, that coast. Oh, things are fine if you’re not in the city. Oh, things are fine if you’re not whatever. Maybe wait and see, and if there’s proof that things are fine, awesome. Let’s celebrate that. But if there’s proof that things aren’t fine, let’s not be blind to it, but let’s adapt. Let’s react. Let’s adjust. I think that this is hard to do. This is very, very, very hard to do, but that’s what’s on my mind these days. It’s just like trying to keep up a pulse on the reality around me and ask myself, is there something that I can learn? Or is there something I need to adjust or adapt to? Versus trying to find the proof that everything’s going to be all right or everything’s going to be all right for me in my bubble, in the way I want things to pan out. I think that can make a big difference. Two quick things. One, I don’t know if we could get back to that if there’s too much of a leap, but I know that this grateful versus lucky thing has been a big topic. You said that it’s been on your mind. I start my days with five questions usually and I write down the answers, I used ask, what are you grateful for? Or what do you appreciate? And now, since the last time we talked about this I ask, why am I lucky? Or what am I lucky about that right now? I already started playing a little bit with it and it does do different things. It does give me different answers. There’s less of an, I earned it component. There’s more of a, this to me and I say thank you, but I don’t necessarily deserve or earn it. Maybe I do, but that’s there’s no component of that in there where with gratitude, maybe there could be. During these days how do you practically do this? Do you just ask yourself this question all the time, why am I lucky? Or do you write it down or do you just feel it, do you meditate on it? How do you practice this right now? [0:24:37] Hiten Shah: For me, I think of it as a reminder, and I’ve never been able to get gratitude to be a reminder while luck and feeling lucky feels so much more natural as a reminder. I feel like it’s much more approachable, and I feel like I can say at any time, and I think for me it comes up more often than the idea of gratitude. Often meaning, just easier to remember, and it is different. It’s different in the sense of it has a different effect also, because like you said, it implies that things are out of your control. And right now, majority of things are out of your control, so it kind of lines up with the current atmosphere. [0:25:31] Steli Efti: That’s dope. Can you give us an example of the last time today or yesterday where you went through that thought process? [0:25:40] Hiten Shah: Yeah. I think if you see something on social media where someone’s clearly not lucky or unlucky, whatever way you want to view it, I would say that’s a great moment to remember how lucky you are for whatever your current situation is. I think that’s really helpful when you watch some of this stuff online because it can turn off that adrenaline, it can not make the adrenaline kick in. That’s been actually really powerful for me because I don’t want that adrenaline for watching a video. I really don’t. I don’t think it’s healthy because it’s just pretty intense and it’s not necessary, the adrenaline. That’s one really important one. I think even the fact that both of us have roofs over our heads that are I’m sure pretty comfortable, that’s a pretty big one for me too. It’s just those kinds of moments. Any moment where I feel discomfort, it’s a good thing to remember and helps me feel lucky. Just literally, “Oh, how lucky am I?” That does sometimes lead to, “How grateful am I for these things?” I want to feel gratitude as well. Really though, it helps me have a very honest viewpoint and balanced viewpoint on what’s going on in the world, what’s going on in my own life, and just an open space for me instead of closes it down because it’s really easy right now to look at things that are out there and be like, “The world is a shitty place.” I don’t think that’s a healthy viewpoint. I think that’s a totally okay viewpoint, I would not tell anyone to not feel that, I’m just saying I don’t think it’s that healthy viewpoint. It’s better to get out of that view, at least for me, when I’m seeing something or feeling the opposite of lucky or feeling like other people are not lucky, just that memory or that reminder, it helps me have a more empathetic viewpoint on other people’s lives too. These days we get to watch some of the worst parts of their lives. [0:28:23] Steli Efti: Yeah. I think if you’re listening to this podcast, there’s a big chance that there are things in your life that you can be lucky and grateful around. If anyone that’s listening to us right now is currently heavily on the struggle bus of trying to do their start-up thing, and just struggling with it or having bigger challenges than usual, we’d love to help if we can. These are unusual times. We don’t have the answers, but at least we can listen, and if we can find something that could be helpful we’d more than happy to help if we can. Get in touch with us if you need somebody to listen to you, if you need help or just need two people to listen. Steli@close.com, [inaudible 00:29:14]@gmail.com. Stay safe and stay sane. I think both of us, we assume the craziness that 2020 has to dish out is not fully over yet, although it’s hard to believe. I feel like we might be in it for some more rocky ups and downs in this year, so we all need to work really hard to stay sane during all this. [0:29:41] Hiten Shah: Yep. [0:29:41]The post 514: How to Keep Your Sanity in 2020 appeared first on The Startup Chat with Steli & Hiten.

In today’s episode of The Startup Chat, Steli and Hiten talk about online meetings & virtual events during COVID-19. One thing that has been on the rise during the COVID 19 crisis has been online conferences, and there are a number of factors that are causing this. One of those is that people ar3e working from home and have more time to attend these conferences. In today’s episode, Steli and Hiten talk about how the number of invitations to online events conferences has revved up rapidly, Hiten’s experience with online events, how people have more time for online events right now and much more. Time Stamped Show Notes: 00:00 About today’s topic. 00:40 Why this topic was chosen. 01:28 How the number of invitations to online events and conferences has revved up rapidly. 02:02 Hiten’s experience with online events. 03:39 How things might gradually shift. 04:23 Why this explosion of online events fascinates Hiten. 04:54 How people have more time for online events right now. 06:00 How people are starving for new connections. 06:40 How online events are much easier to attend. 07:22 One thing that’s always going to be true about online events. 3 Key Points: The amount of invitations to online events and conferences has revved up rapidly.There’s been a lot of exuberance for online events, more than I’ve ever seen in my life.This explosion is fascinating to me. [0:00:00] Steli Efti: Hey everybody this is [Steli Efti]. [0:00:03] Hiten Shah: This is [Hiten Shah]. [0:00:04] Steli Efti: Today on The Startup Chat we want to talk about online meetings, webinars, conferences during COVID-19, is it a good idea, is it a bad idea, is it going to, yeah what is happening in the world around the trying to bring physical events online, what are we experiencing, observing? We both felt like it’s an interesting thing that’s going on around the world, Zoom fatigue and other things pop to mind. We just wanted to chit chat and see what we’re observing, what we think will happen next, how to think about these things. Let me ask you first, I have just, the amount of invitations to online events and conferences for me has just ramped up drastically. Obviously because this is conference summer time I guess and a lot of conference organizers decided to try to do their events completely online but also just the amount of webinars that companies give, the amount of meetings that you, I mean we always because we were remote, always had a lot of Zoom meetings. It’s gotten even more because now I do Zoom meetings with friends, I do Zoom meetings, calls with family members. I just do a lot more of these virtual video conferencing calls. Yeah, I’m curious, are you also, I’ve done a few conferences, I’ve done a bunch of webinars and everything in between so far. I’m starting to try to figure out how I feel about all of this and if I want to do more or less and what’s going to happen in the market. What about you? What’s kind of been your experience of the last couple of weeks? [0:01:45] Hiten Shah: I think there’s been a lot of exuberance for online events like more than I’ve ever seen in my life. I’ll start that way because I still don’t know what to think because of what I just said, there’s been more than ever. For the moment, it feels like people are into it. Into it meaning there’s enough people that are still into it where if you throw some online something or other and have some way to promote it people will show up because it’s not that they don’t have anything better to do, it’s that they’re seeking connection. They’re seeking this. I led a few over the last two or three weeks. I wouldn’t say an insane amount but definitely more than I would’ve normally and I probably have a few more to lead in terms of like topics like product management or remote work or whatever in partnership with different folks. I’ve done that too. I think you’ve done probably more than me. Then even today, the today that we’re recording I have one that I’m going to that I’m actually attending not leading which is usually rare for me. I don’t go to a lot of these things. I don’t know, it’s in the air, what can I say? I’ve never seen anything like it. In terms of what happens next like you’ll probably just see a shift into, a shift or transformations of these events if we continue on the pace we are because I think people are going to get tired of it at some point it’s like hey, enough is enough, we don’t need more online events to go to on some regular cadence or whatever. Maybe the topics will dry up. That being said like I’m not sure because we’ve had online events for the longest time. These online summits and conference [inaudible], they were happening already. This sort of situation has definitely accelerated the amount of companies that are willing to do online events which is now basically 100% of them while in the past you’re talking like five or 10% were willing to do it. This explosion is fascinating to me. It still goes back to fundamentals though like you will get attendance to your online event if you have an audience or you’re able to promote your event to the point where like you get, you know you get people signing up for it and showing up to it. A lot of that has to do with the content and the topic and the people who are going to present if that’s how it works and all that kind of stuff. That stuff hasn’t changed. In fact, now that there’s more competition for people’s time with an online event, I think there’s a combination of things. There’s more competition clearly for people’s time and attention and they also have at least a little bit more time and attention. Even if you do have kids or you have like, obviously this is all like mostly around folks in tech and stuff like that, you still have a little more time. That is work time. You might go to some online event with that time. It’s interesting and some people have a lot more time especially if they don’t have kids or they’re living alone right now because they’re stuck at home. They can’t go out. What do they do on the weekend? What I’m surprised about is I’m wondering why there aren’t more online events on the weekend. [0:05:39] Steli Efti: I think it’s because a remarkable amount of people still will use the weekend to I don’t know, go on long walks or go to the park or … [0:05:52] Hiten Shah: That’s fair. [0:05:53] Steli Efti: Try to do something that’s kind of like not … [0:05:56] Hiten Shah: Normal. [0:05:56] Steli Efti: Sitting at home. [0:05:57] Hiten Shah: So to speak, yeah. [0:05:58] Steli Efti: Normal, kind of people still think in like work week and weekend. [0:06:02] Hiten Shah: True. [0:06:03] Steli Efti: The division is still there I think. It hasn’t been broken through. I agree also that there, it’s interesting on the one hand there’s a lot more noise because everybody is doing an online conference and webinar series and meet ups and online drinking get togethers and online coffee sharing thingy things and all that. [0:06:24] Hiten Shah: Yeah. [0:06:26] Steli Efti: But at the same time as you said people have more time. People also I think maybe starving a bit more for not just connection but also new connections, right. One beautiful thing that happened during this time for many people is that they were forced in one way or another to spend more time with a smaller circle of people, spend maybe more time with their family than they used to which brings a lot of value. It doesn’t remove the need or the beauty of connecting with new people, right. Maybe that’s something people are starved for right now, is like meeting new people, hearing, interacting with new people. The other thing is that since it’s online, the decision of do I really want to travel you know to this city, whatever that day is very different from this conference is something I always wanted to go to but I never took the time for. Let me look at the speaker list, I’ll jump in for like 30 minute a session here and 30 minute a session there from my couch. It’s a very different kind of an ask. I’m also, I’m very much the wait and see game where I have not yet observed fatigue for this. I don’t see people complaining loudly enough in big enough numbers that this is something they don’t want anymore. I do still see it ramping up but I’m always also skeptical to some degree when everybody is doing the exact same thing I’m like, the one thing that’s always going to be true is if your content is better, if your audience or point of view or the type of people you bring together is more focused, you’re always going to find an audience. You’re always going to find people that will appreciate that, right. Conference does not equal conference. Zoom call does not equal Zoom call. The people that are in there, the things they’re talking about, the way they talk about it and the people that came to listen, all this makes for a unique experience. You can go to two different conferences and have a day and night experience in terms of how valuable and how enjoyable it was. Content is still king and you can still stand out by doing certain things better by selecting certain things a little differently. I am wondering if this is a novelty thing and if in two, three months we’re going to see some kind of backlash. I wonder if somebody out there was planning to do a virtual conference, a summit or something along those lines if you want to do that my best guess, might be wrong but my best guess right now is that you want to do it now. You might now want to wait or plan for it to happen in September and August or something like that. You might not want to plan for a super long time from now to do a big online conference but yeah, same thing with webinars. Webinars are kind of a smaller thing to put together but they’re, companies that always used to do webinars, there’s some of these companies that used to do like maybe a webinar a month or so. Now there’s one that stands in my mind where I’m like they’re doing multiple a day. What is going on? They’re just doing a lot. I had to unsubscribe from one or two email lists that I always like to be on because I’m like I can’t handle four emails a day about webinars. It’s just too much. It’s interesting. It’s also interesting kind of different formats I see [Hopin] pop up a lot more. I don’t know if you know that platform. [0:10:02] Hiten Shah: Yeah. [0:10:02] Steli Efti: There’s going to be multiple ones. I’ve been to like two conferences where they had this like whole thing where you join online but there’s like a backstage area as a speaker you can hear the current speaker and then you’re invited onstage and all of a sudden there’s another person popping up that’s basically introducing you and it’s trying to mirror more the real conference vibe and experience with the kind of poles and the way that they design the UI/UX which was surprisingly better than I thought the first time I joined it. It was also good content. It was just very focused audience, very good moderation and just the speaker before me and after me were people that I thought were compelling and I wanted to listen to so that makes a big difference as well. It’s going to be interesting. Are you thinking about this stuff? I don’t think you’ve ever done an in person conference. You’ve been invited to webinars quite a bit and conferences, physical conference … [0:11:02] Hiten Shah: We actually own the conference brand, Neil and I. [0:11:08] Steli Efti: Shut up, really? [0:11:08] Hiten Shah: A long time ago, yeah and did a bunch of them. I wasn’t day to day involved but definitely know way too much to be dangerous such as sponsors are what make you money, tickets are gravy, things like that. Yeah, I’m pretty dangerous when it comes to that stuff and you know, yeah I think like typically I’ve always been fascinated by the online version of these things. The main reason I’ve been fascinated by the online version is I think the amount of efficiency you can have and with all the, especially with Zoom and the tooling you can use, you can Hopin and there’s Livestorm. There’s a few different brands out there and products out there that actually make the process easier. I know that Zoom is probably going to try to get into that at some point and make that all easier. I don’t know, I find it like, I find it appealing but for me personally just from a, because you’re kind of going into the sort of marketing angle of it or sales and marketing angle of it, I feel like it’s like one of those things that’s like a shot in the arm and it’s like a one off, we got the shot in the arm and we’re going to do it. It causes some form of a spike for your business which is not by any means, it’s not bad. It’s just those kinds of things that I think are in my opinion and for my own tolerance level are sort of phase two, phase three for a brand unless that whole experience of an online event or something is like somehow core to the business. For our business content is core to our business, same with yours I would say at FYI content is core to our business. [inaudible] at Close I know you folks of have done tons and tons of content. You’ve done some of the video yourself, that’s different, that’s core, right. For other businesses and other [SaaS] companies or whatever, content might not even matter to them, right. A good example is Dropbox. They didn’t do any content. They didn’t grow because of content, right. They grew because of the really strong value proposition matched with a really great double referral program, right that they really popularized. I think like I’m always fascinated by events. I love leading them with partners and letting them manage all the logistics and stuff like that. I’ve done webinars here and there. We used to actually do at KISSmetrics one webinar a week really back in the day. I am entertaining getting back into that mode and doing things like that. It just seems to me like a later stage tactic or like later stage, not even stage tactic for most businesses. [0:13:58] Steli Efti: Fascinating. I think there’s a lot that is happening when it comes to online events, get togethers, conferences, contact exchange with bigger audiences, networking and all that, there’s a lot going on. [0:14:12] Hiten Shah: Absolutely. [0:14:12] Steli Efti: Yeah, I think that we all need to keep an eye on that. If you’re listening to us and you’re like I can’t believe these two don’t understand x, y, z which is happening right now, the big trend that’s going to happen next, please let us know. Just send us an email, please. Keep Hiten, hnshah@gmail.com, steli@close.com, let us in in the secret of what is happening next in the space. We’re definitely curious and eager to learn and I think that this space is one to watch because there’s going to be a lot of things happening there. I assume that there’s going to be opportunity there in terms of using those channels to grow your business and to build an audience. All right, I think this is it for us for today. We’ll hear you very soon. [0:15:03] Hiten Shah: Yeah. [0:15:04]The post 513: Online Meetings & Virtual Events During COVID-19 appeared first on The Startup Chat with Steli & Hiten.

Today on The Startup Chat, Steli and Hiten talk about the Sales & Marketing Grind. This episode is inspired by a tweet from Hiten that pointed out how marketing is a grind, one that you need to get used to, as it requires you to do the same thing over and over again in order to be successful. In today’s episode of the show, Steli and Hiten talk about the tweet that inspired this episode, what prompted this tweet and why marketing is different from sales and much more. Time Stamped Show Notes: 00:00 About today’s topic 00:34 Why this topic was chosen. 01:05 The tweet that inspired this episode. 01:40 What prompted Hiten’s tweet. 03:02 How marketing and sales is a grind. 04:09 How marketing and sales are like working out. 05:03 What makes Steli stay consistently on the sale grind. 08:22 A mindset that salespeople need to develop. 10:10 Why marketing is different from sales. 11:34 How Hiten gets through the grind. 3 Key Points: The most difficult part of marketing and sales is getting used to the grind.Just do more of what ended up working.It’s the same thing over and over again. [0:00:01] Steli Efti: Hey, everybody. This is Steli Efti. [0:00:03] Hiten Shah: And this is Hiten Shah, and today I’m going to start off the chat. Steli is prodding me to talk about a tweet, and this tweet was talking about how sales and marketing is a grind, and you have to do the same thing over and over and over again, and you might even quit before you hit gold. So what thoughts did it spur for you? [0:00:33] Steli Efti: Well, first let me actually read the tweet, right? [0:00:36] Hiten Shah: Yeah, go for it. I totally butchered it. [0:00:38] Steli Efti: So, “The most difficult part of sales and marketing is getting used to the grind, doing the same set of things over and over and over again, sometimes with such mediocre results that you think about giving up right before striking gold.” I like that tweet, because I think there’s a kernel of truth in there, but there are parts of me that instantly recognize the truth in this or my truth in this, but there’s also a part of me that wants to disagree, and then there is a immediate question that I have once in a while when you tweet, which is what prompted this? I literally go, “Huh, I wonder what prompted this? Probably something interesting. I have to remember to ask him next time I talk to him.” So let’s start the episode with that. I’ll tell you what I think about this, but first, what made you tweet this? What prompted this tweet, this thought? [0:01:34] Hiten Shah: Yeah, I think especially with sales and marketing, people look for the silver bullet, and the silver bullet is the one thing you can do and everything’s all taken care of. What I’ve noticed for sales and marketing, it’s not that. And so what prompted it, is nothing super in particular one event or anything like that, but I was just thinking why a lot of people have a hard time with sales and marketing, while let’s say with engineering or design or even product, they might not have as hard of a time. One conclusion I came to is you’re doing the same thing over and over again. When it comes to some of these other areas like engineering or product or design, the repetition is not the same. You’re not necessarily doing the same thing over and over again and likely seeing mediocre results. You have a tangible feeling of progress and momentum that can happen in those scenarios. While with sales and marketing, I don’t want to say it’s hit or miss, but especially earlier on when you’re trying to sell something or even marketing a product or service, the amount of grind is there. And then when something works, the next thing you have to do is just grind some more on the same thing. So even when it works, you’re just doing more of the same, it just happened to work that time, and you think you could make it work more. Whether it’s closing a deal because you changed your pitch all of a sudden, because you learned over many other conversations that you need to change your pitch, or with marketing where you do a lot of, usually you’re just doing a bunch of experiments early on to figure out what channels, what things work, and that’s like a grind in itself. But then when you actually figure something out that works, guess what? To do more of it, same grind. You just do more of whatever ended up working. And it’s not to say there’s no creativity to these things. It’s not to say any of that. It’s more about what feelings people go through and what motions they have to go through in order to be successful in those areas, and also feel like they’re successful and feel like they’re making progress. The whole thought on sales and marketing to me is it’s a grind. It’s the same thing over and over and over again, and you have to kind of get used to that and realize that you’re going to have a outcome and things are going to work, but if you stop, they won’t. [0:04:15] Steli Efti: Yeah. In that sense, it’s sort of like, maybe a good metaphor is working out, right? Going to the gym, working out. It’s not the type of thing that you can do for a while, reach mastery in and then can stop because now the results that you’ve accomplished are forever yours, where it’s just like your body’s always going to be super fit and super muscular for the rest of your life because you worked out for five years really hard. You have to do it your entire life if you want to maintain those results. So, let’s do this. I’ll share something about how I dealt with the grind in sales, because that’s kind of my world, and then maybe you on the marketing side. What made you, or what is making you able to stay on the grind, especially on the repetitive side of marketing for such a long time, where many people would have stopped at some point? And I’ll share the same thing on my end on sales. [0:05:23] Hiten Shah: Cool. You want to go first? Go ahead. [0:05:24] Steli Efti: Yeah. I think in sales, I think one of the biggest… So, some people that have been embracing the grind of selling for a long period of time, the reason why some people can succeed with that and sustain with it is that they love the chase. They love the feeling of chasing a deal and the feeling of direct accomplishment of closing the deal and acquiring a customer, convincing somebody to purchase something. That was never me, so that never worked. I also like it, but it’s not something that fuels me in a way that I could do this because I just love the chase. What fueled me, what allowed me to grind, and I’ve done, I don’t know, I’ve done an insane amount of selling in my life. The amount of cold calls I’ve made and the amount of cold emails and the amount of deals I’ve closed are astronomical. The reason why I was always able to do it, I mean, one is definitely that I was always passionate about what I was trying to accomplish, but I always thought about one thing differently than many other salespeople, which is that to most salespeople, the person that’s involved in the deal is secondary, right? They’re trying to get the deal. The deal is at the forefront. We’re trying to get corporation X to buy this a product and to sign this contract and to bring in this amount of revenue. That’s at the very forefront. And then we have maybe four people, Mary, Bob, James, and Joe, and they’re all decision makers in this, so I have to convince all these humans and collaborate with them and get them to make corporation X, Y, Z purchase. I always thought about these people and I was thinking, well, sales gives me this unique opportunity to influence people and hopefully create value in their life, but also to get to know them really well. And all I have to do is, when I’m doing all these cold calls, when I’m closing all these deals, is to pick winners, to pick people that I’m like, wow, this person is actually really cool. I’m really connecting with this person. I think this person is very smart. I think this person is going to go far and do really interesting things in life, and then I’ve found a new person to invest in, to build a relationship with, that could serve me for the next 30 years, right? So then even if what I’m doing is repetitive in the sense that I’m just working on deals, cold calling, cold calling, trying to close, there’s a secondary program that is running for me, which is, this is a great opportunity for me to get to know people in a really unique environment and then to build friendships and relationships that are everlasting, and that will pay lots and lots of dividends. This person might purchase from me for the next 20 years. As they progress in their career, I’m always going to have them quote, unquote, in my Rolodex. I’m always going to be able to present them new products, new features, have them buy, maybe they’ll come and offer me opportunity, give me referrals. So thinking that way allowed me to not feel like the moment that my quarter is over and I closed the deal, that work is wiped off and it’s worthless, because what was still there were the people that I’ve met and the relationship that I built with him, and that was compounding. And that helped me a tremendous amount, and then the other one is I think in way we’re similar, just, I don’t know, there’s a certain discipline to know that you need to be willing to do some unpleasant things if you want great results. And eventually, you fall in love with that feeling. With the feeling of quote, unquote, the grind. There’s a bittersweet pain. It’s just at the gym, when you do a great workout, it usually pushes you to a certain point of exhaustion or discomfort, and in the beginning, and for most people I assume, that discomfort is a signal to stop and it’s just negative. But once you fall in love with it, that discomfort is a positive signal. It’s something you get addicted to. It’s something you know this means growth, and it feels great and very fulfilling. And it’s the same thing, or it has been the same thing for me on the sales side of things, especially with the more repetitive things. [0:09:52] Hiten Shah: Yeah. When it comes to marketing, it’s like the majority of it is really about the success you find and knowing that you will find success if you just keep experimenting and keep going, and having that sort of belief. The reason I say that is because the difference with I think sales and marketing is this. You do sales and it feels like you have to focus on the inputs and the number of inputs that you’re doing, number of cold calls, number of emails sent, et cetera. And then obviously there’s replies to them and the next step, a number of next steps, you close. With marketing, it’s a little bit different. You have the ability to see some kind of data or information, usually at a faster pace, usually, not always, than sales. There’s only so many calls you can make in a day. That’s a little bit different with marketing, where there’s, I mean, depending on what channel, what tactic you’re using, there’s a lot more to the grind where you do get some kind of measurable results a little bit faster, potentially. Where it’s like, oh, you post somewhere and you get some traffic to your website, for example. Okay, you got some traffic. That’s actually not a bad thing. Maybe nobody bought, but now you know something that can help you do the next step in a day, for example. Well, with sales, I don’t think you can know anything in a day just because you sent a bunch of emails or did a bunch of cold calls. Maybe you’ll know whether that first email got any responses or not and stuff like. So there is some learnings there, but I think with marketing, you can figure it much faster whether you move on or there’s something there to continue with. To me, the way I get through it on marketing is just remembering and looking at what I do know, and what output I’ve gotten from what I’ve done. I think in sales, you could do the same, but again, with marketing, I think it’s quite a bit easier, because you can measure things, and these are typically more, there’s more volume to those things that you measure. Then the way I get through the grind on both areas actually is by basically focusing on iteration and improvement, and taking whatever I learned and applying it to whatever I do next. For both of these areas of a business, I think it is the copy, the writing, the creative side of it, imagery in the case of marketing a lot of the time. It’s all those types of things that I get excited about tweaking or changing, even the same with a sales email and trying to figure out the best way to say it and send the email and see what happens. And then if nothing happens, great, something was wrong, or not wrong, there’s a better way, and then trying to figure out that better way. So a lot of the motivation for me comes from the fact that I can improve it or I can change it, and treating everything that’s happening as a learning. Like I said, I think in marketing, it might be a little bit easier. [0:13:34] Steli Efti: I love that. Whenever I think about the grind, I have to think about wrestling, and there are these great wrestlers that make the transition into MMA and become mixed martial artists and compete. And some of these guys, one of the big difference between if the background is wrestling versus if the background is boxing or kickboxing or any other kind of martial art, one of the distinct differences is that wrestlers are just better at embracing the grind. They’re just much tougher, and oftentimes they can break their opponents just by the will or how far they’re willing to go in terms of how hard they make a fight or how uncomfortable they make it for both. And so whenever I hear the grind, I see kind of wrestling practice rooms, where people are shouting to each other to embrace the grind. These are just tougher people, so they make other very tough people break. I don’t know, I think it’s an interesting topic. I think that obviously it’s just like everything else in life. I think you can overplay it in both directions. There are people that probably advocate too much and embraced too much just the repetitive, hard work, more hours, just push through everything with sheer will and force. Then there’s the kind of movement that’s also extreme that’s like, no, you never need force, you never need will. You never need to push, you never need to grind. All you need to do is to be smarter than everybody else and find the shortcut and relax and be peaceful, and magically everything great will come to you because you did it in this soft, smart way. Both of them are two one dimensional approaches that are overly idealistic, might work for some people, but for most they won’t. The truth oftentimes is somewhere in the messy middle of both. So, fascinating topic. I love that we got to talk a little bit about the grind on The Startup Chat. All right, I think this is it for us for this episode. We’ll hear you very soon. [0:15:41] Hiten Shah: Keep grinding. [0:15:41]The post 512: The Sales & Marketing Grind appeared first on The Startup Chat with Steli & Hiten.

In today’s episode of The Startup Chat, Steli and Hiten talk about starting a Startup during the COVID-19 pandemic. During the COVID pandemic, there’s going to be a lot of people thinking about starting a new Startup. However, whether now is a good time or now to start is a question that needs to be answered. In this episode, Steli and Hiten talk about if this is the right time to start a Startup, why there’s never a good or bad time to start, what to consider if you’re starting something right now and much more. Time Stamped Show Notes: 00:00 About the topic of today’s episode 00:23 Why this topic was chosen. 01:37 If this is the right time to start a Startup. 02:22 Why there’s never a good or bad time to start. 02:34 How the world is very different right now. 04:38 Why this is a good time to start. 07:44 What to do differently if you started now. 09:05 Why cash flow is more important right now. 10:16 Why “nice to haves” are off the table. 11:57 What to consider if you’re starting something right now. 3 Key Points: I don’t think there’s ever a good or bad time to start a Startup.The world is different.There’s more access to information right now than in 2008. [0:00:00] Steli Efti: Hey everybody. This is Steli Efti. [0:00:03] Hiten Shah: And this is Hiten Shah. [0:00:05] Steli Efti: And today on The Startup Chat we’re going to talk about starting a startup during COVID-19. Basically the idea, if we have to start a new company or a startup right now, no co-founders yet, no money, no product. Would we do it? Would we think that, with what we know about entrepreneurship, would we think that this is a good time or would we want to wait until whenever the economy’s better? And if we thought that now is a good time to start something, how would we go about it? How would we think about it? Is there anything different about starting a startup right now during this kind of special time in history around the world? Would we approach in any way differently than we usually would? I thought that it’d be a fun topic to talk about. It probably is going to have a few golden nuggets for people. So let’s get the first question out of the way because I think that’s going to be an easy one. You never know, especially with when you talk to Hiten Shah, but is this a good time to start a startup or a bad time to start a startup? What’s your reaction to that if I asked you, “Hiten, I have entrepreneurial ambitions, but I wonder if this is the right time for me to start something.” [0:01:16] Hiten Shah: Yeah, great question. It’s just a great question because the circumstances, like this has happened before, right? So there’s like the 2000s, and this is particularly in tech, so there’s the 2000s and there’s like the 2008 kind of housing bubble thing. And then I think the next one was right now. And these are all times when people are like, “Should I start something? Should I not?” People start talking about it. The one thing that like fascinating to me with this question as I think about it right now is, first I don’t think there’s ever a good time or a bad time. So I think it’s false to think it’s good or bad. But for some reason it comes to people’s minds when the world is going to shit and they’re like, “Oh, is this a good time?” It’s never a good time. Is this a bad time? Well, it’s never a bad time. I think it’s like whatever time works for you. Meaning whatever it comes to mind or whatever circumstances dictate that you have to find other options in whatever you were doing, like you’re laid off. So that’s where I’ll start. But I think there’s a big thing that I haven’t thought about till now that really hit me right now, which is, the world is different. Every one of those times, the world was different. You’re talking about like 2000, then eight years later, and now 12 years later, and we’re like 20 years from 2000, which many of us weren’t actually working at the time. I was in college at the time. I was definitely working, but I was in college, I wasn’t in the market, so to speak. And it’s something that I feel like there’s more access today to information than in 2008. Definitely than in 2000. There’s more information. There’s more people on the internet. There’s all these factors that were different every one of those three times. And this time in particular, anyone who wants to start something, especially in the last five years, I would have just told them, “Yeah, just do it.” You want to do it, just do it, give it a shot. Your chances are better than ever. So I don’t really believe there’s a good time or a bad time.At the same time more people on the internet, more access to information, more communities that are online that can help you. More than more communities, there’s like a ton of things that you can do to help you get started if you want. And quite frankly, like the gig economy and freelancing and side gigs and hustles and this and that, it’s a thing now. We didn’t talk about that in 2008, we didn’t have those things. Now we do. And so there’s a lot more systematic sort of ways or structures in place actually support you if you’re starting now versus ever before in the past. So why not? [0:04:44] Steli Efti: Yeah. I’ll come out and I’ll say, of course, like for anybody that’s been a long time listener of The Startup Chat.] You know that one of our core mantras is, it fucking depends. I mean, it depends, but I’ll come out and say this is as good as a time as it’s ever been. Number one, I think that the world is changing and change is, I think, better for the new that can adapt or that can serve the change or help with the change, than for the old. For the old change is always a threat, and for the new it’s an opportunity. Secondly, I think opportunity cost is going to be lower for many, not everybody of course, because if you are healthy and if you are ambitious, and you have a couple of skills and you want to accomplish something, the amount of stable, secure jobs that are going to be out there right now for you, where you know I’m going to go and work there and I’m going to have a great career and there’s no chance they’re going to lay me off and there’s plenty of high paying salary gigs that I can choose from. I guess, my best guess is that, that is going to be less available in the world in the next two years than it was in the past two years. So if there’s less stable corporate career paths available, then the entrepreneurial path is less of an opportunity risk. It’s less risky in general because the corporate job is not as stable in an unstable world as it is in a stable world. So I think that this is probably a particularly good time. And for all the other reasons as well, there’s just more information, more money online to be made. You can find a it’s small audience and make a good living much easier today than you could in 2008. Finding a niche audience in 2008 was still quite hard versus going for serving kind of a broader mass that was already online and comfortable with paying for services and content and whatever. So I think there’s a lot of opportunity today to start something, and I also think the opportunity cost of starting something is low because there’s just not that many stable jobs in companies that you would think there’s no way this corporation is going to go out of business or be in trouble or lay off people in the next two years. There’s just less of that available. So I think it’s a particularly good time. Now let’s ask the question, if you and I, individually, started a startup today with what we know, would we do anything different? We’ve given a million and one piece of advice on how to start a startup, how to get your first 10 customers, how to get your first a hundred customers, how to do marketing, how to do product development, MVP, everything. Like whatever question a listener has that’s kind of new to the world of entrepreneurship, you just type into Google thestartupchat.com and then that word, and you’ll find an episode where we talk about it or give advice. But I think the interesting question is, would you do anything differently if you started a new startup today than you would have done over the past five or 10 years? Is there anything that you would be like, because the world is changing, I would approach it slightly differently? Or I would be paying more attention to X, Y, or Z, or thinking about it differently in some way? [0:08:19] Hiten Shah: Yeah. That it depends thing comes up, because it really depends on your own circumstance and your availability. Right now it’s interesting. I think the difference right now from the past couple of times that everything’s gone to shit, there’s more uncertainty this time than the last two. [0:08:49] Steli Efti: Yeah. [0:08:50] Hiten Shah: And that, I think, would make me want to be a lot more conservative about spending my own money if I have any to spend. That’s probably the number one thing that comes to mind for me, which is like, you’re your own sort of savings, typically you dip into your savings in order to do something on your own, whether it’s for living expenses or even actual expenses for the thing you’re starting. I think I’d narrow my options more so that the amount of my savings I dipped into right now, where it was a lot more limited than in the past. And the only caveat I’d give is, if you somehow have an ability to make sort of money by getting a job really quickly, because for some reason that’s just a available to you right now, maybe I’d think differently about that advice. But otherwise I think being more conservative with your own savings might be a good idea right now. [0:09:48] Steli Efti: Yeah. I would totally agree. I think that if I started something right now, I would care a lot more about cashflow, doing something that can generate revenue fast. And I’m already, I think we’re both already, on the cashflow always, but even more so now than ever before. I wouldn’t want to build anything that would take like a year of building up to start monetizing or anything like that. In general, I would try to start something very small that can get on the road very quickly, iterate, generate little bit of money and then build on that versus building anything that’s more complicated, more resource intense, anything that I know will have to a need venture funding or other funding. During this time, I think the clarifying thing right now is that anything that’s a playful nice to have is just off the table. Whenever there’s like an economic downturn, whenever there’s like really, really hard times or really high uncertainty in the market, I think it wipes the slate clean from products and services that are nice to haves where when there’s great wealth, maybe there are niches for people to play around with new things and to be a bit, quote unquote, a bit wasteful. But when it’s hard times, people will set a much higher bar to the question, do I really want to spend money right now for this? How valuable is it to me? And so I think that this would be even more so the time to ask yourself, is this an absolute painkiller that I’m trying to build? Are there people willing to pay for this today? Not when the world gets better, not when budgets are unfrozen. Are their budgets in the world, are there people in the world that are willing and need to buy the type of thing I’m thinking about building today? Right now, with this uncertainty? But I think cash is king would be even more important. Scrappy. I agree, I wouldn’t want to say I’m going to live off my savings for a year, and by then, hopefully, this new venture of mine is making money. But I’d rather probably think about the what can I do that is pointing to the direction of what I want to build that could generate some cashflow right away in the first month, in the second month? And then build on that. And maybe once it has enough momentum and proof, I go all in on this. But cashflow, I think, would be a huge one. And then being certain that this is something, and I think cashflow is a good indicator for that. If you wanted to build something today and you did customer development and everybody was telling you, “You know what? Six months ago I would have bought this. This is absolutely fantastic idea. It’s just that right now, we wouldn’t want to buy this. But once the market relaxes and budgets get opened again, then I would be interested in this.” I don’t know if I would … I mean, I would always be skeptical about this type of feedback, but today even more so. I’d be like, “All right, this is worthless then.” There’s no sense in building this if people aren’t willing and ready to buy it today and not just in some imaginary future where everything is like it used to be. Because we don’t know when that’s going to be or if it’s ever going to be. So I think that those would definitely be kind of my hard constraints to start something right now. [0:13:35] Hiten Shah: Yeah. Yeah. I couldn’t agree more. [0:13:38] Steli Efti: Well, if you’re listening to us and you’re just starting something right now, we actually want to hear from you. We’re interested. What are you building? Why are you starting it right now? What is your plan to start making money? What is the question you have for us? We’re here to help. We want to support you. Send us an email, hnshah@gmail.com, steli@close.com. If you appreciate this episode, if you’re a fan of The Startup Chat, lots of you are and tell us that and we really appreciate you. Make sure if you haven’t done this, take just one minute if you really like the podcast, go to iTunes, give us a review, give us five stars. We appreciate that. And until next time, we’ll hear you very soon. [0:14:15] Hiten Shah: Thank you. [0:14:15] The post 511: Starting a Startup During COVID-19? appeared first on The Startup Chat with Steli & Hiten.