Today on The Startup Chat, Steli and Hiten talk about how startups grow you as you grow them. Being part of a startup, whether you own it or you work at one, changes you as a person. There are a lot of opportunities to learn and improve yourself. It is safe to say that who you were at the early stages of your startup journey changes after you’ve been involved in it for a while or after you’ve left it – and this is a good thing. In today’s episode of the show, Steli and Hiten talk about how there’s a huge opportunity for personal development at startups, how you stop growing when you don’t care anymore, how people struggle with creating an identity for themselves and much more. Time Stamped Show Notes: 00:05 About today’s topic 01:14 Why this topic was chosen. 03:49 How there’s a huge opportunity for personal development at startups. 05:33 How there are a lot of people who get into venture capitalism but truly don’t know the job. 08:16 How you stop growing when you don’t care anymore. 10:33 How Hiten approaches tweeting these days. 10:47 How Hiten feels about how certain people tweet. 12:59 How startups demand growth from you. 15:12 How a lot of people going into the world of venture capitalism and make no contributions to it. 17:13 How people struggle with creating an identity for themselves. 3 Key Points: A startup is a venture that demands growth from you.If you created a startup, or even if you work in one, the amount of personal development opportunity that you have, I think, is almost as great as like joining the army.There are things you experienced in your life that truly have the potential to change you completely. [0:00:01] Steli Efti: Hey everybody, this is Steli Efti. [0:00:03] 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 tweet, the infamous tweet by now from Hiten Shah, startups grow you as you grow them. So Hiten, I saw you tweet this, startups grow you as you grow them, I instantly liked it and retweeted it because I thought it was a beautifully expressed idea. And then as I often do, especially with you, I asked myself, “Why did he tweet this?” I ask myself this with other people as well. Sometimes I’m just like, “Why did this person decide to write this tweet right now? What is going on in their life, in their world that triggered this?” But with you especially, because we’re very good friends, and because I know I have a space, this podcast, where I can dig deeper. And so let me ask you, what triggered this tweet? Why did you write this on Twitter? [0:01:15] Hiten Shah : I’m not tweeting a lot. I used to tweet a lot. I’m not tweeting a lot. I think a lot of people are tweeting a lot. I have been working on multiple projects at my company, FYI, for three or four months now, and that’s just going to continue for the foreseeable future. Things that only I can do. It has a lot to do with the phase of the company, and the things we want to achieve, and all kinds of things like that. And quite frankly, I don’t have time to tweet. I don’t feel like it either. And .I lurk on Twitter sometimes I’m considering just ripping it off my phone again. I’m not on Instagram. And I’m thinking about a lot of things these days. I’m thinking about the people I know who have built startups, and whether I know them or not, and then turn into venture capitalists, or turn into angel investors. Then I’m thinking about the people that I know that, and I’ve done those things before, and I’ve had that phase of my life where I wanted to invest in companies, and then I decided I don’t want to continue that phase of my life. And then I’m thinking about people who I know used to run businesses very actively, and are relatively from an age standpoint, young, and now only work two to four hours a week. And there’s a few of these people, or work very little, or have less drive, maybe ambition, I don’t know, than they used to. And all these people are either people who I personally know, or people who I see and have met, and there’s no specific people I’m pointing out, but there are a lot of people going into venture that were operators or founders before. There are also a lot of, not as many people, but people that I know that are basically retired, is what I call it. Because if they used to work 16 hours a day, they work two to four now, which is different than working eight. And again, don’t want to get into this whole thing about how hard you work, that’s not the point of this tweet or this topic I guess. And then I realized that if you started a business, you created a startup, let’s say, even if you work in one, the amount of personal development opportunity that you have I think is almost as great as joining the Army. And why I say that is, in the Army you go through a lot of training, right? And you’re put through a lot of exercises. There is a lot of structure. Startups don’t have the same structure. And I don’t know enough about that analogy to do it justice, but that’s just what popped in my head. So for anyone who’s out there that knows about the Army, and I know people that have joined it, a good friend of mine actually was in the Army, and in various countries and things like that. I’ve known other folks as well, so I don’t know enough about it. So if I’m not doing justice to the analogy, totally my bad, but to me what I’m trying to say is there are things you experience in your life that truly have this potential to change you completely. Where if you found a way to document who you were when you started,” and then who you are a year later, two years later, three years later, et cetera, you would feel the difference. You would know the difference. You would be like, Oh my God.” Some people might not even be able to recognize you. And that is where that tweet came from, is just seeing all these people who have started businesses, thinking about even myself, I’m not stopping. I will continue to do this for as long as I possibly can, and I’m damn sure of it. And do this meaning businesses, startups, whatever you want to call it. And I know what it does to me, and I kind of like it. At the same time, I hate it. And so, that tweet came out of looking at, “Oh there are people I know that have opted out of that.” The majority of the people that I know that are in the retired camp have opted out of it. They said, “I don’t want that. I have found a way to have my life and work two to four hours a day, and be happy. And that’s happiness to me now.” Maybe they’ll start up again or not, I don’t know. But that’s where they’re at right now. Then there are people who I know that have gone into venture capital, and literally they make me sad, because they’re operators, and they don’t even know how to do venture capital. Then there are people that have got into it that treat it like yet another startup for them, and they are working their butts off because they want to achieve. And they still have that same thing. So it’s not a judgment even on those people who I mentioned in venture capital who don’t know the job they’re doing, because they really don’t. Bu my point is there are these observations I have, and that tweet is really just about the fact that if you keep going on that journey of a startup, even if you’re working in one to be honest, and really want to achieve, and are determined, and I don’t care about how many hours you work, that’s not really what it’s about. It’s about what it does to you. I think you can just totally not burn out or be over it, and not want to do it anymore at all. [0:07:12] Steli Efti: All right. I’ll be honest with you, it took me a while to get it, because in the beginning when I read the tweet, I assumed that this was about the amount of personal development and personal growth that has to happen for you to be able to make the decisions and execute on certain things in a way that allows your startup then to grow. The relationship between, if you’re not growing, your company won’t grow. If your company is growing, it is going to demand and stimulate an incredible amount of personal growth. Demand that from you. When you started explaining the tweet, and you talked about people that were retired or semi-retired, or people that went into venture capital, I was like, “Where is he going with this? How is startups grow you as you grow them related to people going to venture capital after being founders?” And then at the very end I was like, “Ah, now I get it.” Because you saw these people that decided to opt out of maybe the extreme environment. [0:08:18] Hiten Shah : They don’t know it, but they opted out. They don’t know it. I see it. Because I’m like, “Yo, you don’t care anymore. You don’t care like you used to care.” Literally the word is care. Because if you care about yourself the way you used to, you would be growing super fast. And I know people, I don’t know anyone that’s retired, my terminology of retired in this context, that cares the way they used to. I know people in venture capital that give a big crap that just got into it. Like, they are on it. But then I know way more people that are not, and they don’t know. They think they’re doing a good job, they just don’t know. And these are people who are ex-startup people who are now in that game. I’ve just seen it, and it’s fascinating to me because there’s a big contrast between the two groups. Here’s the thing, at this point, the way I feel about Twitter is that if I tweet something, I don’t think anyone will truly understand where it came from. So I really appreciate you digging into that one because I am not tweeting some random thing that came, popped in my head anymore. It’s something that’s meaningful to me. I don’t care what other people think. [0:09:38] Steli Efti: You. [0:09:38] Hiten Shah : Like, cool, if you got that interpretation, it helped you out or you hate it? I don’t care. It’s cool. I just had to let that one out. [0:09:44] Steli Efti: I can tell, and you can tell by following people’s content creation process. If somebody’s constantly tweeting these super quotable ideas or thoughts, and I’ve done this too, to some degree. You can get into a zone of that’s the way you think. And you constantly are seeking that. So you’re writing emails, you’re talking to somebody, “Oh, I should tweet this. This is a tweet.” [0:10:12] Hiten Shah : You know how many times in the Bay Area I’ve been in a meeting, and then I see someone tweet something after it, and I’m like, “Oh no, that did not just happen.” And I’m sitting here like, “Oh, so now I know where all your ideas come from.” They’re from some random media. And again, there’s not judgment or offense, even though it might sound like it, but like, “What the fuck dude? Do you even have an original thought of your own?” [0:10:41] Steli Efti: So it is judgment, but I’m with you. I’m just judging what [crosstalk 00:10:45]. [0:10:47] Hiten Shah : I’m just saying. It’s not judgment because it’s the world we live in. The world we live in. It’s judgment in the sense of, what you just said triggered it. Because you’re just tweeting a bunch of stuff. I’m like, “Yeah, totally cool.” But the thing is for me, when I’m one-on-one, this is basically the closest thing that anyone can watch. Shit comes out of my mouth that I didn’t know existed. I didn’t know it was there. So if I meet someone, and then I seen them tweet something, I’m like, “I know where it came from,” and that’s cool, because I’m not going to tweet it. I don’t care. But this is how you do Twitter, this is how you think of the world. And that’s what I’m looking at. Not the judgment, it’s just like, “Really, that’s your life?” That’s interesting. It’s just such a fascinating sort of experiment, and thing we live in today. And the thing is, in this Bay Area, I’m here, I live here, and I don’t always go meet with the tech people that are tweeting, but when I do, one thing I’ve noticed is there’s also a lot of conversation about Twitter. A lot of it. And it’s like, okay, cool. That’s cool. We’re going to go meet offline to talk about what’s going on online. [0:12:06] Steli Efti: Online, yeah. [0:12:07] Hiten Shah : Yeah. And it’s probably because you’re going to go tweet something after this about that. [0:12:12] Steli Efti: because you’re thinking, “What can I tweet?” [0:12:16] Hiten Shah : Yeah, and here I’m meeting you, and it should be different. It shouldn’t be like that. I’ve literally been in a meeting and I got asked a question. Literally, I was in a meeting, I got asked a question, the person, about a half hour, hour after the meeting, tweeted my answer to that question. And I just realized, and it clicked, “Oh, this person asked me the question so they can create a tweet.” [0:12:50] Steli Efti: Yeah. [0:12:50] Hiten Shah : And it blew my mind. [0:12:53] Steli Efti: Yeah. [0:12:54] Hiten Shah : Anyway. [0:12:56] Steli Efti: Back to the tweet, to your tweet. [0:12:57] Hiten Shah : Back to the tweet. [0:12:58] Steli Efti: So, here’s the deal. The premise is basically that a startup is such an intense model. It is a venture that demands growth from you, and there’s really no hiding in it. It’s much harder to pretend or to hide in it than other forms of work. So, it is one of those types of work that you get involved with that is more brutal on its demand for you to grow and for you to grow it. It’s not the only one. There’s many endeavors people can get involved with that would allow them to grow dramatically. And then to grow the thing they’re involved with. Some are harsh environments and some aren’t as harsh, but in general, people can grow in all kinds of areas in life. But startups are the types of areas in life that are just so much more demanding. So if you’re not interested in growth, it’s going to be a place where sooner or later you’re going to look for an exit. And so maybe once you’ve done it long enough, and once you’ve had some kind of a track record, you will see opportunities for maybe things that will allow you to enjoy life and be quote unquote, successful, and be recognized and all that without those brutal, harsh demands on you, continuing to grow as a person. And now, as you said, there’s people that go into all kinds of areas, venture capital is one that you mentioned as an example. People can go into VC and grow a tremendous amount, and make a tremendous contribution to that world and to startups, but many go into that world and make no contribution to the world and to startups, and experience no growth whatsoever. They’ve just gotten into an area that is prestigious, where they make great income, where they have a cushy, cool, fun job, but they just stop growing. They look for refuge in an area where they can keep working and do something that seems appealing and impressive to people, without having to personally grow as much or really prove that they’re truly making an impact and a contribution. And I do think in most people, let’s forget about entrepreneurs, let’s forget about the Bay Area or the East Coast, West Coast, like these cities or these concentrated areas where the most ambitious of humans aggregate and try to change the world or have careers, or try the impossible. If you look at more broadly the average person, a lot of them, at least where I grew up, the idea was that you’re going to struggle and work hard. And then eventually once you got a certain status, a certain position in life, then you can finally stop struggling and growing, and taking risks, now you just have to hold on. Now the whole idea is that you can just keep that cushy job and you make a great income and it’s safe. And then eventually you buy a house, and then eventually you retire, and you made it. You struggle up to a certain point on the mountain, and then you just put your camp there, and then that’s it. That’s where you’re going to build your house, and you’re not moving anymore. You found a good spot. I think most people I know, and I knew growing up, that was their mental model of life. Even when you’re young, when you’re a teenager and all that, you have to struggle through trying to create an identity for yourself. You go through all these struggles, these, “Who am I? What and who am I attracted to?” In school, you’re going through these, “Am I a cool kid? Am I a nerd? Am I a musician? Am I an outcast? What group do I belong to? What is my identity? Who will I become or be some day?” You go through all these, being a beginner at everything you do, it’s awkward and you don’t know how to do it, and you don’t know how to be good at it. And then eventually you went through that struggle, and now you have an identity, a title, a social circle, and boom, now you’ve created your safe life, and now just stay there. Then you’re confident and your secure, and everything is great. But the problem with that is obviously that if you stay there, you also have zero growth. If you don’t continue to do and involve yourself in new endeavors, and try new things and explore new areas and expand your world with new people, yes, you’re not going to have failure, you’re not going to have the pain of rejection or the pain of being a beginner and being clueless and looking stupid in the process of attempting something new, or being involved with new people, but you also don’t have any growth anymore. So I think that idea is very universal. I think in the startup world it’s just so much more obvious, because it’s such a concentrated, demanding world, that if you are in a startup, as you grow, your startup grows. And as you grow your startup, you grow. And most people that we know that have been in this world, they don’t want to be in it forever. And eventually they do take an exit. In one way or another, they do take an exit, and then they become part of a world that’s more comfortable. And I want to bring this up because I’m sure you don’t mean this, it doesn’t mean that you cannot stop being in the startup world and keep having tremendous growth in life. [0:19:41] Hiten Shah : Yeah, of course not. Yeah, it’s all good. [0:19:44] Steli Efti: You could become almost anything. Almost anything you could do. And let me ask you, could somebody stay in startups their entire career, whatever, their entire life, but stop growing, become more of a career startup? Maybe not as a founder, maybe as an executive that keeps joining small startups but is growing? Could you stay in that world and not grow for really long periods of time? Have you seen that pattern as well? [0:20:19] Hiten Shah : Yeah, of course. And that’s why I said it as, startups grow you as you grow them, I didn’t say it in any other way, because I think if you want to grow something, you’re going to grow. It’s going to grow you, you’re going to change, things are going to happen. And if you don’t care about growing your startup aggressively or fast, or whatever way you want to call it, then that’s fine. You’re probably not going to grow at the same pace. Because the thing is, and I mentioned this earlier, but I’m spending less time on social media, and not for any particular reason except I just don’t feel like it. So there’s no like, oh it’s horrible or anything. There’s some patterns and things happening, but for me, there’s a bunch of stuff I’m doing that’s pushing my limits. And it’s pushing my limits of what I know, what I’m good at, and I’m noticing how it’s just changing me, and leveling me up in ways that, I am now conscious too that in the past I just thought it was like, “Oh, I have stuff to do, there’s things I need to do for this business or I want to do for this business, and I’m going to go do them.” And I almost took that learning for granted. Now I don’t take any of the learning for granted, or any of the personal growth that comes out of it. Even being able to see a team member on my team feel a certain way, that I’ve been working with for almost 10 years, I was able to think of that person and some patterns for that person. And something that he probably would have spent a month dealing with, I literally didn’t have the patience, and also knew him well enough to have the trust to call him out on it, and we were able to make a switch within 24 hours. And it’s that kind of thing that is not just learning for that person, but it’s also learning for me of like, “Oh wow. That’s really interesting. In the past I wouldn’t have done that.” And so there are for me personally, because you asked where that tweet comes from, I think it’s just, you want an opportunity to grow super fast personally, you want to really push yourself to limits and cross certain boundaries that you might have about yourself, this is the way to do that. This is a great way to do that. Just make sure you want to grow your thing. It’s a great way to do that. There’s a lot of friction to it, because there’s always a friction to changing and growing and all that stuff. But it’s the one that can give you, I think, some of the most satisfaction as you’re growing. Whether what you’re doing is successful or not, because you are thrown these challenges, and you get to dive into them. Now, not everyone’s personality is like that. Not everybody needs that. Not everybody wants that. I know for myself, I need it. Literally there’s things that I want to get better at right now. There’s three things that I want to get great at that I know I’m not great at. And those three things I’m going after, and I’m repeating it to whoever will listen. Whoever needs to hear it. And it’s helping me get better at those three things. And I’m sure there’s another episode in this, because I’m sure you do things like this, but we should talk that. But to me, yes, the startups grow you as you grow them. That’s the way I think about all this. And it came from lots of observations, and not just some, “Hey, I’m just thinking about this right now.” No, I’ve been thinking about this for like six months, and trying to really figure out what this means to me, and what the difference is between these different people that I see in the world. Because a lot of them had these experiences of, they’re a startup, them having that same experience, and then them getting tired of it, I think. It’s totally possible. [0:24:20] Steli Efti: I love it. All right. That’s a beautiful way to end the episode. Startups grow you as you grow them. We’ll hear you very, very soon. [0:24:29] Hiten Shah : See ya. [0:24:29] The post 480: Startups Grow You as You Grow Them appeared first on The Startup Chat with Steli & Hiten.

In today’s episode of The Startup Chat, Steli and Hiten talk about what founders should do after their startup has failed. We hear a lot about startups that succeed and do very well, however, what is not talked about very much is the number of startups that fail and how these failures can affect a founder negatively. So in this episode, Steli and Hiten talk about what you should do after your startup has failed, why letting go is super important, why you shouldn’t make instantly massive life decisions on that day your startup fails and much more. Time Stamped Show Notes: 00:00 About the topic of today’s episode 00:16 Why this topic was chosen. 02:24 Hiten’s thoughts on what you should do after your startup has failed. 03:13 Why you should write stuff down. 04:02 How we’re supposed to fail. 04:55 Why letting go is super important.  06:30 Why you should talk to people that were involved in the startup and ask them what they think went wrong. 08:19 Why you shouldn’t make instantly massive life decisions on that day. 09:03 Why you should take some time off. 10:00 What you should do if your startup fails or is failing. 3 Key Points: Write a post mortem as soon as you can.You gotta find closure.We are supposed to fail. [0:00:01] Steli Efti: Hey everybody, this is Steli Efti [0:00:04] Hiten Shah: And this is Hiten Shah. [0:00:05] Steli Efti: And today on The Startup Chat we’re going to talk about what founders should do right after their startup has failed. So here’s the reason why I want to quickly talk about this with you. I realized this is actually a really important point. I’m not sure how much content is out there around this. This is not like what should you do as your next venture, but this is what did you do the day that you close up shop, right? The day that you stop service or the day of bankruptcy of the day where you officially have failed with your startup. What do you do the next day? And the reason I wanted to talk to you about this is that I have two good friends that are currently going through this where a startup that they’ve been working on for a long time, they had a lot of ups and downs. They fought very hard this year to try to turn things around and now they’re kind of in the final, final week of running the business and then closing up shop. And this is a journey that has taken them, I don’t know, five or six years. So they’ve poured a lot into this business and they are definitely more along the burned out, exhausted side of the spectrum and they’ve been having a lot of conversations individually. One-on-one with both of them on what should come next. And I think that it might be an interesting episode for the two of us to kind of unpack this for people either that go through this right now or just for people to have heard this in case they have to go through this at some point in the future. Typically when a founder comes to you Hiten that has just failed and just closed up shop and is now wondering, what the hell do I do next? Should I go try to find a job? Should I start my next project? Should I, I don’t know, go meditate at a retreat for a couple of weeks and find the meaning of life. I know that it is a very individual question that depends on so many different factors but typically guide me through kind of your approach or your experience or your general philosophy when it comes to advising or helping founders that have just kind of failed with a grim style. [0:02:21] Hiten Shah: Write up post-mortem. As soon as you can get that shit out of your head, period. That’s the first thing you have to do. I think you have to get it out of your head. You have to like, I did this maybe a little bit late after Kissmetrics and it was just literally stream of thought bullets of like as much as I could write about it. One angle is like just bullets on what you think you did right and wrong. Another angle would be just write the story of the business so that it’s just out it’s done. You’ve got to find closure and talking about it is great, but you talk about it for a long time with other founders and stuff like that, but writing something up for yourself in a journal or a notebook or whatever, some form of a postmortem where you can review the experience and let it out is really key. That’s the only thing I suggest. Everything else comes from that because once you do that, you’ll realize all the mistakes you made, you’ll realize whatever feelings you had, you’ll realize all kinds of things. Just do that. As soon as you feel comfortable doing that, maybe you’ll cry. I don’t know, but go do that. That’s the thing I suggest every and so many people don’t do it and then what they’re doing is they’re sitting with all of that for a very long time. They don’t get past the point of the fact that it didn’t work out and the thing is we’re supposed to fail. That’s what this whole idea of creating something from nothing is all about, we’re supposed to fail. It’s like a thing we’re supposed to fail. It’s not like we design it to fail but we’re supposed to fail like we’re doing something so risky already in terms of likely to fail. Right. And when you started looking at all the stats you’ll agree obviously, but at the same time we failed. It didn’t work out the way we thought it would or didn’t work out. To be successful you have to just let it out, let it all out, find your way to let it all out. I would write it though because nothing else compares to actually writing it down. [0:04:32] Steli Efti: I love this so much. I am very tempted to just wrap up the episode at this point. This is such powerful advice. I love it – [0:04:41] Hiten Shah: Honestly. Honestly dude, everything else is bullshit. Like there’s nothing more to it. But then letting that thing go. You can’t let it go if you don’t have a good relationship with it. That’s all it boils down to. It’s like anything in life where like you had so much energy, you put so much time and effort into it and for whatever reason it didn’t work out. You don’t want this delusion in your head about why it didn’t work out. You don’t want to wonder. You don’t want to have regret. You just want to figure out what actually happened in my opinion and how can I just let it out because that’s what leads to the most productive learnings from it. [0:05:25] Steli Efti: I love that. Two more things that I’ll add and then we’ll wrap up this episode, but this is super powerful advice and obviously this applies to many different situations. It could be even a project that didn’t work out, a product that didn’t work out, but- [0:05:44] Hiten Shah: A partner that didn’t work out. [0:05:46] Steli Efti: And a partner that didn’t work out. Yeah. I think that adding some flavor around this, one thing that I’ve done and advised and have gone through myself that I found incredibly useful and valuable is to talk to a few people that you respect about it and ask that people hopefully that you know were involved but were not kind of like maybe you’ll call from somebody who worked in the business every single day. So people, maybe friends, investors, advisors, people that you know maybe over the months, over the years you kept telling them news and updates and they would kind of following the journey from the sidelines, sit down with those people to have coffee and ask them from their, the information in their vantage point, what do they think went wrong and what is the type of advise that they had they gave you that they didn’t think you listened to or that they weren’t comfortable sharing with you at the time? What was something that you thought was going wrong but you didn’t know how to tell me or something I was doing wrong. You weren’t quite sure how to share with me. I’ve gone through that process with people and sometimes I’ve gotten enlightening pieces of information in ways that really helped me add some pieces to the puzzle. But you have to be open enough to want to hear, right, to really want to learn and listen and if you’re still in the face where you have a narrative that you want to hold on to and it’s kind of a waste of everybody’s time. I’ve seen this as well over and over again with founders come to me and they ask for honest advice and I can tell as I’m trying to give it to them that they don’t want to hear it. They want to go through the theater of pretending they asked for advice, but they’re holding onto their thoughts and their ideas and they’re so shielded against anything that is challenging that, that it’s like what’s the point of this? You came here to hear what you want to hear and everything I’m saying that doesn’t fit that you’re ignoring. Why are we, I’m just, I’m just sitting here. So you have, so you can pretend that you’ve asked for feedback around and gone through the process. But if you’re ready to truly listen and to hear painful things sometimes with things that are uncomfortable, that can be incredibly useful. And then the last thing I’ll say is, again, everything, there’s exceptions to everything, but typically I would advise people to not instantly make massive life decisions on that day. Right. If your start up, just failed maybe it’s not the right day to propose to somebody to get married or to start a new business or to make a massive investment or to take any kind of huge risk. Ideally, I think in most cases it’s advisable to take whatever time is comfortable and feasible. Maybe it’s a week, maybe it’s a weekend, maybe it’s a month or quarter. For some people it’s a year, whatever it is. But take some time off and fill up your batteries, have some fun, do something that has nothing to do with the past business or with future massive life decisions. Just take a little bit of a break because what you’ve gone through probably was very, very difficult, so just be gentle and kind and kind of refill your batteries a little bit before you step into life again and make big decisions and commit to longterm big projects or whatever it is. When people rush from one, from a failure into something, into a big life event, I’m typically nervous that, that might may or may not come from a place where you have the awareness, the presence, the battery tank to make really, really good decisions. [0:09:46] Hiten Shah: Yep. Yep. That’s it. [0:09:49] Steli Efti: That’s it from us. If you are listening to us and you are going through this currently, your startup is just failing or is just failed. You’re going through a really difficult time. We want to be here for you. If you have nobody else, if you think that we could be good people to listen, to, give advice, to give you feedback or just support you, you can always reach out steli@close.com, handchai@gmail.com. Being a farmer can be lonely at times. The two of us know this too well. So when it will be, can make a difference at a founder’s life and make sure that they are not going through this alone. Its our honor and pleasure, so always reach out if you feel like we could make a difference to help. And until next time we’ll hear you very soon. [0:10:30] Hiten Shah: Take care. [0:10:31] The post 479: What To Do After Your Startup Failed? appeared first on The Startup Chat with Steli & Hiten.

In today’s episode of The Startup Chat, Steli and Hiten talk about how to reflect and plan ahead at this time of year. At this time of year, it is very common for founders to go into reflection mode and reflect on the progress of their business. This could be thinking about what they’ve achieved in the year, what went well in that year and what didn’t go so well. This is a good thing, and while it is recommended that some founders do it, some other founders might decide to use this time of year to plan for the coming year. In this week’s episode, Steli and Hiten talk about how you could use this time of very productively, two key things people do this time of year, why you should do what works for you and much more.  Time Stamped Show Notes: 00:00 About today’s topic. 00:38 Why this topic was chosen. 01:10 How you could use this time of year very productively. 01:44 Two key things people do at this time of year. 02:40 How this time of year is the easiest time to get somebody to reflect on the past. 03:07 Why a lot of people reflect at this time of year. 04:34 Why you might want to reflect at this time of year. 06:07 Why you should do what works for you. 09:53 How there’s no one path to be successful. 10:51 Why Hiten loves giving one on one advice.  3 Key Points: This is the easiest time to get somebody to reflect on the pastIf you’re in that mood, don’t fight it.Just do you. [0:00:00] Steli Efti: Hey, everybody, this is Steli Efti. [0:00:03] Hiten Shah: And this is Hiten Shah, and today on The Startup Chat, what are we going to talk about, Steli? [0:00:07] Steli Efti: Well, Hiten, I think we’re going to talk about the mood that we’re all in, which is we’re kind of in the tradition between holidays, New Year’s, and kicking off 2018, and I think we want to talk a little bit about that season from an entrepreneurial point of view, from a [subtle] point of view. First, things slow down, right? And they kind of, I think, a lot of people… It puts people into a contemplating mood. You start reflecting back on how this year went, and you start trying to prepare for what the goals and what the changes and what the “resolution” should be for next year. I think we want to just go through this a little bit from our own lenses and maybe highlight some of the things startups and entrepreneurs can do to use this time in the most productive way possible, to make sure that the next year is going to be killer and successful, and they’re going to accomplish the right type of things that they want. [0:01:11] Hiten Shah: Yeah, I love that. I think I’d like to split it into two. I think there’s two things people do during this time, in my experience, which is they reflect on the year and what’s gone on, in this case in 2017, and then they think about what’s next. In some cases, one thing I wanted to mention is, you mentioned startup and founder perspective? I’ve found this to be a business and personal perspective as well. Holistically, regardless of size of company or what you’re up to because a lot of companies go into planning mode pre-holidays, and even into the holidays depending on how aggressive the company is and how much they let you have a holiday, so to speak. And they’re planning out next year. They’re doing forecasts and all that fun/boring stuff, depending on how you look at it, and then other companies that are much smaller, like a startup, they tend to not have formal processes. Sometimes they don’t even think about this stuff, but there’s still a bunch of reflection and figuring out what’s next going on. So to me, let’s talk about reflection really quickly. What I’ve found, and this is mostly in the advisor role I have in a lot of situations, whether it’s with friends or companies I’m formally advising, as well as in my own companies, I definitely take that role more than I take any other role. It’s either advisor coach or some form of a manager and in terms of the contributor to the work, that’s definitely, in the latter Q4 of most years, I’m more on the other side, not as much the contributor to things. And so what I’ve found is, this is the easiest time to get somebody to reflect on the past, especially the past year. That’s one of the most common things I’ve found. Sometimes it’s even easy on a personal note to get people to reflect even further back because of the holidays and the time with family. So that’s how I’m going to start on the reflection side of things. [0:03:09] Steli Efti: It’s an easy time to reflect, so you might as well use it to do so. That is actually a really interesting observation. Very astute. I think that we don’t have to dive into too much why that is, I’m sure it has multiple reasons why, right? One is just the season in general, when the days get shorter. It gets darker earlier. People start to close in on the chapter of the year from a seasonality point of view and thinking about the next year just puts you in a sort of mood. Then people are just in that mood in general. People start talking more about it. The content that pops up in social media, the conversations you are having with friends and family and colleagues, everything just starts revolving around finishing up this year, looking back, and then closer to New Year’s people start thinking ahead and start planning. So it’s a good time. If you’re in that mood, don’t fight it. One tip that I’ll give is, some people like to be rebellious and be like, “Ha ha, this is all bullshit and I don’t like the holidays,” and I’m not a particular fan of holidays or celebrations in general. Not that I’m not a fan, I’m just not overly participatory when it comes to this stuff. But when everything around you is in that mood and the momentum of something pushes in one direction, might as well just use that energy and go with it and go, “Well, if everybody is reflecting back, let’s just use this time instead of fighting it and do so ourselves as well.” And this points to a quick side note that I want to bring up. There was a little bit of a discussion going on online about, “Should you hustle through the holidays and work through it as a startup, or should you take a break?” I think some founder or ex-founder or whatever posted about some startups who slow down and take a holiday break, the ones that don’t, they have an advantage over you. They are going to kick start the next year with a competitive advantage, something along those lines. And there were many other founders that reacted negatively to that and there was a whole debate going on on social media. I’m sure you saw this, about should you take a break or not take a break or do both or whatever. So it’s an interesting- [0:05:31] Hiten Shah: I actually didn’t see it. [0:05:34] Steli Efti: Oh, you didn’t see it? [0:05:36] Hiten Shah: And because I didn’t see it, I have even a stronger opinion about it. [0:05:41] Steli Efti: All right. So hit us with it. [0:05:44] Hiten Shah: Fuck this shit. I don’t know. That’s my reaction. My reaction’s like that, because you know what? I really strongly feel like this about it because after some many years of working on stuff, working on business, it’s just, god. Just do you. If you want to take a fucking break, do it. [0:06:08] Steli Efti: Yeah. [0:06:09] Hiten Shah: If you want to go figure out how to hustle or keep working, you know what? Do it. But all I hate about this is, there should be no rule around this. There should be no guidance anybody tries to give you. Because it doesn’t fucking matter. That’s the truth. Right now, like in my case, I don’t know how to stop working. So I’d be working regardless, but if I told you, “I worked hard this year at the end of the year compared to last year,” I have no fucking idea. I don’t know. Why is this even a discussion? Just do you. If you want to take a break, take a fucking break. If you feel like taking a break, take a break. If you want to keep working and do what you do, do what you do. Right? It’s so personal. I guess that’s my response. It’s personal. It’s fucking personal. So many things happen in our lives that are not just our businesses that affect our businesses and our businesses affect our personal life that it just doesn’t fucking matter. Why are we making this such a big deal, right? People, this is so personal. People are going to do what they’re going to do. If you feel like you need to work through the holidays because someone’s going to beat you? I’m sorry. I’m sorry for you. I really am. [0:07:22] Steli Efti: Yeah. And this is why 90% of the time when people argue on social media at times, I look at and I go, “I could say something here and probably benefit from just a retweet or hearts point of view, exposure point of view, because people like those kind of arguments and a lot of attention flows towards them. But I don’t really care. I just don’t. I can take a counter opinion to this, but I don’t really care about this discussion, right? And I think in many cases we often land on the, “It depends.” There is not an answer that’s universally true. And some people should work through the holidays and other people shouldn’t and it shouldn’t be determined by some fucking expert or founder or successful person on Twitter, and it shouldn’t be determined on your competition, and it shouldn’t be determined on your bad conscience or your stressful inner voice that’s trying to tell you you’re not enough and you need to work less or more, be more like this guy or less like that girl. It depends. It depends on your situation. If you’re totally inspired and out of your mind motivated and you work gives you joy and there’s not anything that you have to take away from? Work through the holidays. Awesome. Who gives a shit that these are holidays? If you’re a 22 year old kid somewhere away from family, it doesn’t matter if it’s holidays or not. Maybe this is the best time for you to work. Maybe it’s quiet, nobody’s in the office, nobody’s bothering you. You can be the most creative person you are, and that might be the best gift you can give yourself. And in other situations it’s crazy for you work and feel like the need to answer some bullshit emails and do busywork all day to just create the feeling that you are progressing or that you’re not falling behind. So I couldn’t agree more with you. But this goes back to, it depends. “What is right for you?” is the right question and not, “What is everybody else doing?” What is the right thing to do as a startup during the holidays? There is no such thing. There’s no right thing to do. For every piece of advice, and I tell this, oftentimes I’ve gotten into the habit that whenever I give really strong advice to somebody, whenever I’m incredible convinced of what I’m saying is right and I say it in a very forceful way, I always now end with this side note or this public service announcement. I always go, “And this the way to do to. And by the way, for everything that I’m telling you, there’s 10 counter examples of startups that did it the other way and still succeeded. Just throwing that out there.” There’s always a counter example. There’s always somebody that did it differently that still succeeded. There’s not one path to doing life and there’s not one path to doing startups or entrepreneurship or business, so don’t look for, “What am I supposed to do during the holidays?” Ask yourself, “How do I feel? What’s my life? What the context around my life? And how do I use that context and this time in the best way possible for me?” Right? [0:10:46] Hiten Shah: This is why I love giving one on one advice and I really hate generic, I have to go up and speak and give everyone advice. Because the best advice I have is, “Don’t take anyone else’s advice.” Especially if I’m up on stage trying to give some generic bullshit advice. Right? Because if you have to caveat it, it’s not really advice, in my opinion. So I think, not to get off on this tangent, but I’m sorry, to get off on this tangent. [0:11:10] Steli Efti: To get off on this tangent. [0:11:13] Hiten Shah: When I give advice and it’s one to one, it’s always great, and the reason it’s great is I listen to the person. I hear what they have to say and honestly, half the people I talk to, I tell them, “You better be working right now.” Other half of the people, I tell them, “You better take a break.” And that’s just what it boils down to. I can’t say to everybody the same thing. This is the problem with these Twitter debates, like you said. So I think we’ve talked a bunch about reflecting, right? [0:11:36] Steli Efti: Yep. [0:11:39] Hiten Shah: And I think we can talk about growth and the one thing I’ll say is, this is a great opportunity to think about what I call, what’s next? And what you have upcoming in your life, regardless of whether you’re the hard worker doing some hard work, so to speak, or trying to relax during the holidays or whatever, just thinking about what’s next in whatever way is really useful, especially because ideally, you probably just reflected. Reflecting is one of the easiest things to do right now. It’s actually typically hard during times when the world is moving faster. Because definitely in Q4, especially starting Thanksgiving and onwards, especially in the U.S., I’m sure in other countries too, but other countries I hear from you, Steli, that are a lot more chill most of the time anyways, but it’s just a great time to think about, “What are you going to do next year? What’s going to happen?” Whether it’s personal or professionally or even in any way that resonates with you. [0:12:39] Steli Efti: The thing that I love about this time of year is that momentum is such a powerful thing, and we’ve talked about momentum plenty of times here, that it can be a good and a bad thing. Momentum in all areas of life, when you have been doing something more and more and more and more, it’s at some point very hard to stop that thing, especially when you’re going the wrong direction. And it’s important to keep doing the same thing if you’re going in the right direction, but the beauty of this season is because things slow down, it gives a chance to ask what’s next from a perspective of what needs to change. And when you’re not in the day to day hustle, bustle, and stress, it’s easier to then potentially adjust and add or subtract something from what’s going on in your life to your startup, right? So I would take this time when it comes to thinking about what’s next and ask the question, “In a year from now, next year during this time, what do I want to look back to when I think about the year? What should’ve happened? Where do I want to be? Where should we be? And what is something that I’ve been carrying around for this year that next year around this time I don’t want to have anymore? I want to let that go.” And startups have habits and startups keep doing things. Any group of people will keep doing things that will be useful and valuable, but we also get into the habit of doing things past their prime or past their utility. So being able to just take a moment and ask, “What do I want a year from now, and what do I not want to have anymore a year from now? What do we need to let go of? Where do we need to change?” Asking those big questions, and one way to do it is to go backwards. To start with the end in mind. End of next year, working your way backwards to the beginning of the new year. And the other way to do it, and I tend to do both things, try to go bottom up and then top down. The other way to do things is not to think year or two or three or five ahead, but just to think a day ahead, and go, “From a day to day perspective, what’s one little thing I want to add and I want to add consistently and do throughout the entire year? And what’s one little thing that I’m doing that I want to subtract, just take out?” And that’s usually the way that I approach the new year. It’s just reflecting on a high level, but also taking the time to think big picture, what do I want to accomplish year from now and chuck back, but also what do I want to add and subtract on a daily basis, habitual basis. And then think if I do this for 365 days, do I think that that’s going to create a ton of value? [0:15:34] Hiten Shah: I love the subtraction part. I think a lot of people don’t think about what they can stop doing or what they can do less of. And especially the idea of doing it in small chucks day to day. I don’t actually have anything to add. I think you really gave people a lot to think about if they’re thinking right now. [0:15:52] Steli Efti: Sweet. We’ll wrap this episode up then in just one second. I just have one more thing that I forgot to mention, which is, we’ve talked about this in a prior episode. I don’t remember which one. This little hack that I do where I have an Evernote, of you can have any kind of note you want, where I track the entire year, a gratitude tracker. I just put in a month, like December, and then in bullet points I just write down everything good, awesome, or exciting thing that happened during that month that I’m grateful for, and then at the end of the year I just go through the entire list to kind of reflect on the year. And depending on how much time I have, I go back two or three years. Usually I write a little summary about the year and I read the summaries just to reflect, because life if a blur. I don’t remember what happened four months ago, three months ago, the entire year. Sometimes in the moment I feel like this year was really stressful or this year was not as great or this or that, but then when I look at that bullet point list, I go, “Holy shit. This year was amazing. I totally forgot about it.” So it’s one of those exercises that I tend to do at the end of the year and one exercise that I can highly recommend everybody to add as a habit for the next year. I’m not a big journal guy, but this bullet point in a simple text editor, that habit has worked for me really wonders and I’ve been doing this for now, I think, four or five years. So with that out of the way, we wish all of you an incredible life, day, and next year if you’re listening to this prior to the new year, and we’ll hear you very soon. [0:17:31] Hiten Shah: See ya. [0:17:31] The post 478: [Encore Episode] Beginning of the New Year – How to Reflect and Plan Ahead appeared first on The Startup Chat with Steli & Hiten.

In today’s episode of The Startup Chat, Steli and Hiten talk about why your startup isn’t your baby. In the startup world, it’s very common for some founders to compare their businesses to raising a child. And there’s a good reason for this as certain aspects of running a business does feel like raising a child and a founder can develop a level of attachment to that business. But doing so can be quite harmful and should not be encouraged. In today’s episode, Steli and Hiten talk about Hiten’s thought on calling your startup your baby, why a lot of people think of their startup as their baby, the fundamental differences between a startup and a baby and much more.  Time Stamped Show Notes: 00:00 About today’s topic. 00:34 Why this topic was chosen. 01:24 Hiten’s thought on calling your startup your baby. 01:11 Why a lot of people think of their startup as their baby. 04:22 How a startup is not biological but mechanical. 06:18 How you might have to kill your startup at some stage. 06:41 The fundamental differences between a startup and a baby. 06:57 The harm in thinking of your startup like a baby. 12:15 How attachment can be a bad thing. 12:50 Hiten tip on how to avoid making running your business difficult. 3 Key Points: With your kids, you have no choice but to deal with them.I feel like people create a false sense of attachment when they say their startup is their baby.A startup gets killed by the founders every day. [0:00:01] Steli Efti: Hey everybody. [0:00:01] Hiten Shah: Hi. Cool. [0:00:02] Steli Efti: Okay. Hey everybody, this is Steli Efti. [0:00:05] Hiten Shah: And this is Hiten Shah. [0:00:07] Steli Efti: In today’s episode we’re going to talk about all the reasons why your startup isn’t your baby and why you shouldn’t say your startup is your baby or think it. Now this is something that’s kind of one of your pet peeves, right? If you talk to a founder and they think or say that their startup is like their baby, it usually pisses you off. [0:00:28] Hiten Shah: Yeah. The other day, I’m working with an engineer, a new engineer, and he was like, “I’m birthing this thing,” and that probably pissed me off even more. But, this engineer doesn’t have any kids, so I don’t think he really understands what that looks like or feels like. I’ve had two and I was in the room when the kids were birthed … Birthed, or whatever you want to call it, both times. And yeah, I have a visceral reaction. One of them is, with your kids, you have no choice. Unless you’re really, really a unreal human being, you have no choice but to deal with them. They’re your kids. There’s exceptions, but they’re very rare, where someone will not deal with their kids. Obviously if you give your kid away for adoption, all that, whole different story. But in the context of this, it’s like these are … Startups die. They just die. They die and it’s your fault. Kids generally die and things like that happen, but it’s not your fault. Also, with the kids, you have an attachment. It is part of you. It’s your DNA, to a great extent. This kid would not exist without you. A startup is much different. It’s a business. It’s not anything else at the end of the day. I feel like people create a false sense of attachment when they say, “This is my baby.” [0:01:53] Steli Efti: All right. So I’ll play devil’s advocate here. [0:01:55] Hiten Shah: Go for it. [0:01:56] Steli Efti: Not because I disagree with you, just because it’s going to be fun. Don’t you think that … I would argue that a lot of people think about a startup as like a baby because it is a potentially useful metaphor, right? You came up with the idea of the company, and you probably didn’t do it by yourself, there were other people involved in creating it. Hence why the co-founders are thought as the parents and why we often talk about the founder DNA being something culturally that you can sense and feel in the company. In the beginning, obviously it’s all there is, but even later as the company scales and grows and many, many other humans work on it, the starting DNA point made a huge imprint that probably will stay with the company forever. You’re starting something from nothing. Today, there was no name, no product, no service, no customers, no nothing, and tomorrow you have created something. And as humans, the first thing we’ve ever created … The main creation that we’ve been involved with probably, on a biological level, is creating other human beings. Copying ourselves, right? And creating businesses is a much more modern form of creation, a more commercial form of creation, but is a form of creation. And then I do think that even with a baby … You could say that when it’s your child you have to deal with it and you’ll have to deal with it for your whole life. But a child, to a certain degree, it is yours and it has your DNA and you’re really responsible for it just like your company, but it eventually grows up and becomes its own human being with its own needs, and it becomes more than just a copy of you. There are more people involved in … They say it takes a village to raise a child. There are more people involved than just you to influence who that child becomes. And that’s, again, a very similar metaphor to how a lot of people would think about a business. Don’t you think that as a metaphor it kind of fits really well and that’s probably why people use it? [0:04:15] Hiten Shah: Look how long it took you to explain it. It took you forever to explain that. I know you were doing it to play devil’s advocate and that’s great. I just don’t agree. It’s not biological. It’s mechanical. [0:04:32] Steli Efti: That’s true. [0:04:33] Hiten Shah: Right? It’s mechanical. Majority of business is not creative. I don’t mean to say it can’t be creative. I don’t mean to say it shouldn’t be creative, but it’s not creative. But none of that still goes to biology and this living, breathing, speaking, opinionated thing, that’s not a combination of a lot of other things. So a child is not a combination of a multiple people’s work and they get to have ownership over that. I don’t have ownership over my kids, but I definitely have ownership over my companies. I have equity in them. It is an embodiment of me just like a child would be, but it is not something I can’t change. A child is hard to change. A child’s personality for example. It takes a lot of work to change a child’s personality. I don’t recommend people try to do that. And with a startup, it’s like you’re actually trying to kill it all the time realistically. Because there are a lot of these other startups that are out there that are trying to kill you, or take away your customers, or be better than you at something. And that to me … I don’t want to feel like … Here’s what it boils down to be … I don’t want to feel like my startup is so precious I can’t kill it. If I think of it as a child or a baby, I’m going to think it’s so precious I can’t kill it. That’s really what it boils down to. Thank you for the devil’s advocate because that was really helpful in getting to that precise thing which is like, “Dude, the startup can die. The startup will die. The startup should be treated as if it’s going to die.” Because that’s when you really have the breakthrough. [0:06:21] Steli Efti: Yeah, and it’s not just it might die it, I think the money quote, “Is you might have to kill it.” [0:06:28] Hiten Shah: Right. [0:06:29] Steli Efti: Right. [0:06:29] Hiten Shah: Yeah. [0:06:30] Steli Efti: That is the money … You might have to take the responsibility to kill it, and if you think about it like a child, you will never- [0:06:35] Hiten Shah: It will be that much harder. [0:06:37] Steli Efti: You would never want to take that responsibility to even think about that option because you’re so attached to it. [0:06:42] Hiten Shah: No, you’re not killing your child. You’re not ever going to kill your child. Not on purpose, this is very rare, right? [0:06:48] Steli Efti: Yep. [0:06:48] Hiten Shah: While a startup gets killed by the founders, by the CEOs, by the executives, every day. There’s a startup dying right now. There’s probably dozens of startups dying right now. There are startups that by the end of next week will be dead, and the year’s over, and they’re done. And someone did it, and it was done on purpose. So yeah. Yeah. You’re not sitting there trying to kill your child. You are sitting there constantly trying to kill your startup. I actually do believe that even if you look at a lot of the values that Facebook has, they have a great value. I’m going to paraphrase it, but it has something like, “If we don’t invent the thing that kills Facebook, someone else will.” This attitude, it’s an attitude shift, it’s a mindset shift, and it’s one where I really get worried, honestly, when people think about their companies as babies. I get worried for them, and the amount of emotion they’re attaching to their business. [0:07:54] Steli Efti: Just before you gave us kind of the essence of why this is harmful, I was just about to ask you, what’s the harm in this What are all the bad things that come as a result of people thinking that they’re birthing their companies, and that they’re the parents of them and the startups is their babies? You gave me the answer even before I was able to ask the question. This relates to a prior episode that we talked about, which is that I think that one thing that we can agree on is that too many startups are not being killed early enough. It’s a tough balance to decide when you need to persevere and when you need to call it quits. But I think knowing and having the mind frame that at any time you have the responsibility to ask the question, “Is this still a good business? Do we need to shut this down?” That being a real option. Although you’re really dedicated and passionate. You can be dedicated and passionate about your company and still always feel the ability to ask the logical question, “Is this still a good business? Do we need to shut this down or are there good reasons to continue?” I think that that’s a balance that is very rare to find with founders. Most founders are either too flip floppy and they’re very opportunistic and they don’t care. They just want to make all the money. If today’s crazy is about AI, they’re finding some people that work on an AI startup and they join as a co founder, but then if they don’t raise money they move onto the next thing. They don’t really care about anything, they just like leeching onto opportunity. And then there’s the other extremes, these people that truly believe that they’ve birthed this thing and it’s their child, and they will never let go of it no matter what the world tells them, no matter what the market’s tell them, and they’re ruined. A lot of times lives are being ruined that way. They get into debt. They are emotionally and physically destroying their body. They’re harming their families because they’re not letting go when the time has been overdue and this company should be shut down. It doesn’t mean that you can’t start another company or do something else. So I do think that it’s tough for people to find that balance of being dedicated without being attached. Of truly being passionate about that company and feeling ownership, without feeling like it’s part of their identity and they cannot let go of that. [0:10:23] Hiten Shah: Yeah, I think that’s a really good point around identity. The startups are a part of your identity. That is what you’re doing. That’s the business you’re working on. There’s countless examples of that, right? Facebook is synonymous with Mark Zuckerberg. Virgin is synonymous with Richard Brunson. And so, when I think about that, when you think of it that way, the identity connection’s always going to be there. Especially with the founder. Especially if they’ve been successful to some extent, grown their business. But the problem still lies in the fact that it’s still not your baby. Just because you identify with it in that way, it doesn’t mean that you should think of it like your baby. You should definitely think of it like your achievement or something you’re working on and you care a lot about. Of course. I wouldn’t want people to think that I think you shouldn’t care about your startup. I just don’t think you should care about it in a way that gets you so attached to it that it makes it harder to make hard decisions. [0:11:23] Steli Efti: Yeah. That’s really it. When you lose yourself in the startup and it makes it harder to make hard decisions, you’re going to make really bad decisions for yourself and that company. So ultimately you’re harming that business. Okay, I hate to draw the metaphor back to the child. But in this case it’s actually not that crazy to say that sometimes parents are also so attached and so overly protective that they’re doing things that in the longterm are really harming their children. They’re not empowering them. So I think attachment in general, and that’s a topic that we’ve talked a lot about, but attachment in general is just something that will turn you into a founder that’s less successful, less effective. So thinking about your startup as a baby will make you inevitably more attached to it, and then will make it harder for you to make hard decisions. We had an episode, I want to highlight to people that are listening that want to learn more about this, about attachment versus dedication. It was episode number 29, so if you want to hear about Hiten and my framework on attachment versus dedication as an entrepreneur, you can check that episode out. Do want to wrap this up with a tip, Hiten? [0:12:49] Hiten Shah: Yeah, absolutely. [0:12:51] Steli Efti: So what’s your tip? [0:12:52] Hiten Shah: What’s my tip. My tip is don’t do things to yourself that make it harder for you to make business decisions. Sometimes it’s hard to see those but when you’re thinking about, just an example here is this whole episode, when you’re thinking about your startup like your birthing it or like it’s your baby, you end up getting this sense of attachment like it is your baby or like you are birthing it. And that sense of attachment can make it very, very difficult to make hard decisions. It can even make it difficult to make seemingly easy decisions, like we’re going to change the market we’re in. And that’s what people don’t realize when they use this language with themselves. So watch the language you’re using when you speak of your startup, especially in the sense of your level of attachment to it. Obviously you care a lot about it. It takes up probably most of your life. So again, it’s not to say that it’s not an important. It’s not to say that you shouldn’t have some level of conviction and emotion about it, but that level can be really dangerous. It’s actually where most founders go wrong. [0:13:59] Steli Efti: I love it. All right, so my tip is going to be to find some examples of the type of founder that we’ve talked about. I think there’s so many stories out there that create this false sense of these founder heroes that went through hell and went through all the suffering, and everything was stacked against them, and everything was pointing that this is going to be a failure and they should stop, and they just never stopped because they love their company like their baby. A lot of people think of people like Steve Jobs that was incredibly attached with his company and all that. So I think there’s a lot of stories about these type of founders and how perseverance and attachment and looking at your company like your baby, that that is a necessary requirement for success. I think if that’s most of the content you’ve consumed, the most of these stories you’ve consumed about heroic entrepreneurship, then it’s going to be really hard for you to act differently because it’s going to feel like you’re acting in a way that will not lead you to success. So my advice would be, look for counterexamples. Look for people like … Hetin can be one really great example. You see a founder that’s very dedicated, very passionate, but not attached. Not talking [inaudible] his companies as his babies. But Hetin is not alone. Look for other examples of people that are incredibly dedicated, incredibly hardworking, incredibly passionate about their company, but would never say, “It’s my baby.” Would never say, “I could never kill this company or never shut it down.” That are able to make really tough decisions or tough choices in tough situations. And sometimes it’s to keep going with it, and sometimes it is to shut it down. Look for these examples because the more of these examples you consume, the easier it’s going to be for many of you to follow that example without creating anxiety that you’re doing something wrong. Look for the type of entrepreneurial stories out there that prove that there’s more than just one way to go and that this, “My company’s my everything in life,” is not the only way to create massive success and be very successful, and hopefully also happy entrepreneur. So look for some of these examples and stories out there. [0:16:12] Hiten Shah: Never say never. [0:16:14] Steli Efti: Never say never. All right. That’s it from us. We’ll hear you very, very soon. [0:16:19] Hiten Shah: Bye. [0:16:19] The post 477: [Encore Episode] Your Startup Isn’t Your Baby appeared first on The Startup Chat with Steli & Hiten.

Today on The Startup Chat, Steli and Hiten talk about how to handle private life challenges while running a startup (forgiving yourself). One thing that is inevitable at work is that there’s going to be personal issues that will happen to team members. This could be as a result of health issues, loss of a member of something as simple as relocating to a new place. Managing life challenges at work are crucial as if poorly managed can lead to a lot of stress in the team. In today’s episode of the show, Steli and Hiten talk about what life challenges are, how to handle challenging issues at work, why great communication is key when these issues arise and much more. Time Stamped Show Notes: 02:15 About today’s topic 00:42 Why this topic was chosen. 02:00 How to handle challenging issues at work. 02:31 Why great communication is key when issues arise. 03:33 Why you and your family should always come first. 04:25 Why companies should be proactive in helping team members through life challenges. 06:05 Practical ways companies can help manage life challenges. 08:30 How team members can be overly optimistic about their situation. 09:38 The importance of being transparent in difficult times. 3 Key Points: We’re all going to have challenges at work but how we deal with these issues is what matters.It’s really about communication.Everyone knows that life happens and family is super important. [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 this concept or this idea where like, how do you deal with things that happen in your personal life that are debilitating to some extent or that really cause you to have to focus on it. Maybe in some ways cause you to really have to put a lot of your energy towards your family or your personal life compared to your work? And what do you do about it? [0:00:36] Steli Efti: Yeah, so the reason why we wanted to talk about that was that just recently, I had a number of people, both on my team but also friends, going through just personal challenges, right? Somebody’s father dying. We had just started. So a new team member works with us for a month or so, then his dad passes away. And so that is obviously a super dramatic personal life event that affects work as well. But also people with less traumatic things happening to them of just like moving, and how interrupted that can be to life and therefore also to work. And the common theme that I saw in many of these situations was, most of the advice and most of the work and energy I had to invest in those people was all about giving them permission to deal with life and be okay with the fact that work will have to take a step back for a little bit. Just telling people, “Hey, it’s okay. Take care of yourself, take care of your family, work will still be here in two weeks, in three weeks. It’s okay if you’re not on your A game”. And seeing how much people struggle with giving themselves permission, to be out of balance at times, to be struggling. We’re all going to go through phases where we struggle, but how you deal with that struggle if you’re giving yourself permission and if you deal with it with forgiveness towards yourself or if you make it even harder because you create this pressure and stress of thinking, “Oh my God, I’m behind on work”. And creating this extra pressure and destructiveness that ultimately I think will lead to even worse results in work as well. [0:02:33] Hiten Shah: Yeah. I think it’s really about communication because remember, you’re not the only one on our team. So being able to communicate with your team, even if it’s a highly personal matter and you don’t want to share what it is, you should say, something personal is going on in my life and these are the… You wouldn’t communicate it this way, but essentially these are the rules of engagement with me, for this amount of time until this is over. Right? Or until I get my head straight on this. And so talking about your availability, being vocal about it in a good way, right. And not being embarrassed, and making sure you are actually communicating, right. Because most of the time, in your company, people are just going to be concerned and they really care about your wellbeing. And so it’s really important to communicate regardless of what the situation is. Even if you don’t want anyone’s help or anyone’s sentiments or anything like that, just communicate. It’s where I see people really, really screw it up, especially in those times when everyone knows life happens. And honestly family first. It’s super important to take care of yourself and your family. And when things happen to be able to take the time, and I haven’t found a company that’s actually not okay with that and not accepting as long as you’re communicating. What happens is when you don’t communicate, people just start guessing about what’s going on. That’s the last thing you actually want. [0:04:10] Steli Efti: Yeah. I love that. I think that’s super important. Flipping it to the other side, I think from a company perspective, it’s super important to not just say that you are accepting and understanding of somebody’s personal situation when that happens, but to be very proactive in helping the person and giving the person permission, because in certain situations, one thing that I found for instance is that people that go through these life challenges, they’re not very good at… Or that they’re going to be way too aggressive in the way they are estimating how much time potentially they’ll have to be away from work. Let’s take that as an example, right. So we had a person on the team that had to go through a surgery, a while back and I remember that person saying, “Yeah well, I’m probably going to not be able to work for Thursday and Friday. Just two days after the surgery. But then I’m going to be, after the weekend, I’m going to be back full time.” And I had to step in and tell the person, “Hey, take a whole week, maybe one and a half weeks, and if you feel much better after the surgery, if you actually really feel good, you can come back to work earlier, right? That’s awesome. That’s not a problem. But I think you underestimate how much of an impact a surgery like that can have. And I don’t think it’s a good idea for you and for your team to be communicating. You’re only gone for two days and have all these scheduled meetings and calls and things to do. And then what if your recovery is not as quickly as you hope, right? Then you’re going to create all this stress for you, the team and everybody. So why don’t we take one and a half weeks off instead of just two days. And if you feel much better sooner, that’s awesome. And if you don’t, then that’s also okay. Everybody’s prepared, you feel okay about it.” And it took a lot of back and forth convincing that person, and then when the surgery happened, the person needed the whole one and a half weeks and was very, very thankful and grateful that that was the setup. Because otherwise, she would have struggled a lot and it would have created a lot of stress for her. So I think sometimes people are… And I’ve had the situation with many people where I have to step in and say, “Well, you think you’re only going to need this amount of break from work. I think you should take more”. Because people are just, they’re too hard on themselves and they are making these calculations or estimates that are just unrealistic because they don’t feel comfortable taking these huge chunks of time away from work at times. But it’s important. And you’re not going to be working productively anyways, right? If you’ve not recovered, it doesn’t matter if it says that you are working now, you’re not going to be able to do good work. And it’s going to just create a lot of stress for you. So I’d rather have you not work at all and fully recover, but I feel people are too hard on themselves. They don’t feel they have the permission to do that. They feel uncomfortable asking for that. So I think it’s the responsibility of the company or the managers, for you as managers or founders to step in those situations and protect your employees, and make sure that you give them permission, and that you sometimes even force them to take more time off or take it easy, or take less projects onboard, on their plate so that they can recover and they can regain their focus and energy once the family situation, whatever the struggle is they’re dealing with has passed. [0:07:49] Hiten Shah: Yeah, I couldn’t agree more. I think it’s important to be proactive in those situations as a manager in a company. It’s critical actually, because if you’re not, then honestly bad things happen. People let you down, to be honest, and oftentimes people just don’t realize they’re very optimistic about themselves and their ability to recover from things. So yeah, I think communication is key. I’ve had folks who have had, tragedies happen in their personal lives and they’re able to deal with it just by communicating and going offline, and being very direct about when they’re going to be available and when they’re not. And it’s that simple. I mean, I wish I had more to share on this topic, but you’re talking about the difference between work and your personal life. And both your networks or the people involved around you in those scenarios, they both depend on you for many different things. And so being able to be smart and cover that is really important. And cover it meaning, be able to not let anyone down, at the same time be honest, and be realistic. And the best approach is if you don’t know what’s going to happen, then say you don’t know, and then talk about what the options are, what might happen and then let the people around you know very clearly. I couldn’t say that stronger, because it’s just one of those things where it’s so critical to communicate. You don’t communicate, you end up causing a lot more trouble for yourself than you need to. [0:09:31] Steli Efti: I love it. Yeah, I think proactive communication, asking for help, being transparent and then also from a team perspective or company perspective and management perspective, taking care of people and protecting them from themselves at times and supporting them very proactively and not just saying, well this person said they need this time off, that’s their decision. I’m not going to push them for more. When you are convinced that it’s unrealistic or not good is also I think a really bad idea. So yeah, life happens. If you have hopefully a long life and you have a long career and you work for many years building companies or working in startups and teams, you’re going to have life tragedies unfortunately, in most cases. There’s going to be life distractions. There’s going to be things in your personal life that’s going to affect your work life, and forgiving yourself in those situations for not being the perfect person in work and the beacon of productivity and giving yourself the permission to take it slower for a short period of time at work so you can regain your energy and focus, you can take care of your life, and realizing that this isn’t marathon and hopefully this is something you’re going to be doing for 20, 30, 40 years versus just obsessing over the project you’re working on right now is some a short term milestone or goal you’re trying to accomplish over dealing with what’s more fundamentally important, which is your personal life, your family, your health, whatever it is. I think that that’s super crucial. Just being okay with at times, letting your personal life take priority and having work life, having to slow down a little bit, at those crucial times is super important. [0:11:17] Hiten Shah: Yeah, I totally agree. [0:11:19] Steli Efti: All right. That’s it from us for this episode. [0:11:22] Hiten Shah: Bye. [0:11:22] The post 476: [Encore Episode] How to Handle Private Life Challenges While Running a Startup (Forgiving Yourself) appeared first on The Startup Chat with Steli & Hiten.

In today’s episode of The Startup Chat, Steli and Hiten talk about why founders need to schedule quiet time to think deeply. The world we live in today can be described as noisy. There is too much information and most of the time we’re consuming this information and not making time for ourselves to think or meditate.   So in this episode, Steli and Hiten talk about why you need to schedule quiet time to think deeply, how not scheduling some time for can affects you, the importance of meditation and much more. Time Stamped Show Notes: 00:00 About the topic of today’s episode 00:41 Why this topic was chosen. 01:16 Why you need to schedule quiet time to think deeply. 02:27 How not scheduling some time for yourself affects you as a person. 03:39 How there’s a lot of noise in the world.  04:01 The importance of meditation. 06:30 A story about the power of having quiet time. 09:43 What Hiten’s quiet time looks like. 10:55 An activity Steli has recently picked up. 12:00 A big goal Steli would like to hit. 3 Key Points: We’re not starving for information.Find your quiet time.There’s a lot of noise in the world. [0:00:01] Steli: Hey everybody, this is Steli Efti. [0:00:03] Hiten: And this is Hiten Shah. [0:00:05] Steli: And today on The Startup Chat we’re going to talk about thinking time, quiet time. Why is it important for you as a founder to spend some amount of time in your day to day life, not doing or listening or watching or communicating with anyone? Quiet time, just being with your own thoughts. Why is that valuable? Why is that important and how do we do it and how do other people do it? And kind of some tips on how to incorporate that in people’s lives. Let’s start with setting up the reason why that’s even a thing and why it’s valuable. I’ll go first and I’ll let you chime in with your ideas or tips Hiten. But the deal is this, I don’t know how hard I have to pitch this to anybody, but in today’s world where we have unlimited access to information, people, content, we’re not starving for information, right? It’s the opposite. It’s like there’s so much nutrition that we now have to learn how to keep a good information diet or a good consumption diet of information just like we have to do now with food. And too many people spend all their day either talking to other people or listening to audio books or listening to podcasts like this one, or listening to music or the scrolling through Twitter or Instagram or Facebook. And so there’s not any moment during the day, now even when people are on the toilet or taking a shower, they’re constantly consuming or interacting with content and information. And so there’s not enough time to now process that, or be even in touch with how you feel and how you think during the day and create the space that you’re mind and body and soul needs to actually process some of that information. And for you to actually be in touch and present with yourself and your own thoughts and feelings. And I think that comes with massive costs associated with it. I think that comes with people struggling more and more with being able to concentrate. I think it comes with people being less and less thoughtful because they never have the time to actually think through things. And it comes with a lack of creativity, a a lack of thinking differently or creatively, or coming up with really high level strategic ideas or insights. And it comes with a certain tension because we’re constantly bombarded by information. We never have the time to just relax into ourselves. And so this is, I think today, a huge topic and something that is really slowing down most people, but especially founders. And I think it’s only going to get worse. So becoming competent at this is, I think, super, super crucial. [0:03:11] Hiten: Yeah. I mean, there’s a lot of noises in the world so we’re inundated with more information than ever, whether it’s through social media or just modern life, honestly. And if we don’t find our ways to have quiet time or time to synthesize, or process, whatever is happening, all these inputs, all these things going on, we can drive ourselves crazy. Because there’s so many things to think about, worry about and do, in theory. I don’t really think there are. I think that we tend to consume ourselves with all this information, all these thoughts, all these ideas, all these concepts. But at the end of the day, life can be pretty simple if you want it to be. It’s just a matter of how you think about it regardless of what’s going on or how complicated things are. And that’s why… There’s a few things in my mind here, but one thing is, that’s why we use quotes a lot. To make us feel good about certain things. Or we… Meditation has become such a big thing now just because I think that being able to find… It’s almost like a word for “Hey, quiet time,” you know? Whatever that means for you. Are you doing walking meditations? Are you sitting quietly? I mean I tend to meditate when I drive, which I know sounds crazy. You know, whatever. What have you. I think there are a number of things like that, that we all do as human beings. And with meditation and things like that when really what we’re trying to do is find that quiet time, find that ability to just not have to think about anything and just be calm and kind of calm down because everything is so noisy or can be. And so yeah, I think this is a brilliant thing that I just want to share just like you do with people, which is find your quiet time, whatever it is for you and use it. And use it to your advantage. When you feel like there’s a lot going, on or you can’t get something off your mind, do something, whatever it is that works for you, do it. For me, sometimes it’s just taking a drive, right. If I’m really at my wit’s end on something or just can’t stop thinking about, I’ll just take a drive and that usually helps me. Sometimes it’s with some loud music, sometimes it’s just going fast, whatever it is that helps. A walk helps for me. If I’m in the right spot in terms of where I am, I’ll close my eyes for a few minutes. You can say I’m meditating, but this stuff’s important because the day to day of work, business, life, people, social media, all these things impact us in ways we might not understand. Sometimes even the way you feel might not even have anything to do with what’s going on in your life. It might be that someone know vented to you and now you feel a certain way because of them and some of the energy that they had. And then they kind of… You were helping them or whatever, or you heard them out and now all of a sudden you feel crappy. Right? that happens too. So getting back to your center, so to speak, or getting back to yourself and realizing that whatever’s going on, it’s 99% of the time it’s temporary or something you will get through one way or another. [0:06:24] Steli: I love it. There’s two episodes that I recommend everybody listen to that’s interesting on this topic, episode number 286 mindfulness for founders, and episode 409 meditation for founders, are super relevant to this topic. I want to share a story here that popped up, that’s kind of coming from a totally different world. Most people that know me, know that I’m a huge combat sports fan, a huge mixed martial arts fan. There’s one guy that I’ve been always a fan of. He’s been kind of in the sport forever. He started doing kind of backyard fights in Florida when he was like, I don’t know, 18, 19 years old. And then became a professional fighter and then has had a career where everybody always respected him as being one of the best fighters. But he was never able to break through and get a championship, was always kind of falling short of that. He just became a little bit of a journeyman of sorts. And he took a break, a year break just recently. He’s been in this forever. Right? And once you’ve been in any kind of sport as a professional athlete for a very long time and you’ve not gotten to the very top, the chances are very low that you’re going to get there late in your career. So with him, he took a break for a year and he was booked in some reality TV show that had all kinds of… Somewhere in South America where it was all kinds of professional athletes that would do these jungle competitions that were kind of athletics based. And he came back and he turned into a completely different person, and his career skyrocketed. He’s now one of the most famous MMA fighters, he’s made millions. He’s made more money probably in the last 12 months since he’s been back then in the 20 years prior in his career. And when they asked him what changed, like “Why were you able to break through now?” He attributed that a reality TV show period for this change. And the reason for it was, he was saying, everybody hated to be on that show because every day you would wake up in that jungle and for many, many hours there was nothing to do. And there’s no television, there’s no smartphone, there’s nothing and people would go insane. He’s like “For me, it was a transformational period. For the first time in my life, I actually was waking up and I could feel how I felt. I could think my own thoughts and I was able to just really understand myself and go, this is how I feel. This is how I feel about my life. This is how I feel about my career. These are the thoughts that I’ve been having. These are the toxic patterns I’ve been in. And to really kind of refresh my outlook on life and myself and my career.” And he’s like, “Now that I come back, I cut out so much noise out of my life and I don’t even touch my smartphone. I just spend as little time as possible on playing video games and being on my phone on Instagram all day long and being around all these toxic people. And just spending more quiet time with myself.” And so maybe a weird example, but to me it’s like a very impressive recent kind of manifestation of the power of having quiet time and how much value that can actually provide in your life. Now let me ask you Hiten, so driving is a big thing for you that’s kind of your quiet time. Do you listen to music or audiobooks while driving? Or do you typically, do you have nothing on while you drive because that’s the time where you think or you meditate and you’re just like quiet? [0:10:04] Hiten: It just depends. Sometimes I have things, music on. It just depends on how I feel. And sometimes it’s just very quiet and I’m sort of zenning out so to speak as I’m driving. [0:10:17] Steli: So for me, I don’t have that type of an activity that I love as much as that. Now, obviously when I do martial arts it’s kind of very intense. One or two hour workouts and I’m not listening to music. It’s not like going to the gym and doing weight lifting or something where I would typically do listen to musical podcast or an audio book or something like that. When I do Moitai or or Brazilian jujitsu, there’s no music, there’s no audio book. I’m just add full extent of exertion and and concentration, but it’s not quiet time. So what I do and I try to meditate every day, but I also don’t see that as real thinking quiet time. So what I’ve started to do recently is that I’ve started to incorporate it in areas with easy but uncomfortable. Weird examples, like when I take a shower, I typically used to listen to music or to podcasts while being in the shower. I now make an effort to not do that. To just be in the shower. When I wait for things, like when I go to a restaurant and I make an order and I wait for my order to come through, I used to be on my phone texting, reading, Twitter or doing things. Now, sometimes, not every time, but sometimes, I make the effort to just wait. There’s actually magic and just standing in line, waiting. Again, observing your surroundings, but then maybe also being in your own thoughts. So I do a lot more of that. These little moments in the day where I could just be doing nothing, just being a human being. And I don’t succumb to the urge to just fill that time with something that’s usually consuming information. And then one thing that I do on and off, I have to say that I struggle with this, but one thing I’d like to do more and a goal that I had set, is to just have 10 minutes of thinking time. Where I’m actually in the office or somewhere and I can go out and go on a walk. But where the purpose is just to just think. And when I do it, it’s always magical. Oftentimes the 10 minutes will then extend to more time. But I don’t always make time for that. But I remember when I had a streak for a couple of days where I had that. And I even sat down and I wrote something and this is something I’ve never done on the podcast. I think almost 500 episodes in and I’ve never actually read out loud something I wrote down for myself on this very podcast. But I’ll do this as a preview here even if It makes me a little uncomfortable. But I had a very, in like a two week period where I had like 10 or 15 minutes of thinking time every day. And it was so powerful that I wrote down something. I wrote down. “Silence provides the space to breathe, feel, think, to confront me with my inner self.” [0:13:00] Hiten: That’s great. [0:13:01] Steli: It is a vacation away from noise and oxygen for my soul. [0:13:06] Hiten: Wow. [0:13:07] Steli: Yeah, I felt- [0:13:08] Hiten: All right. [0:13:09] Steli: I felt very poetic apparently in that moment but… [0:13:12] Hiten: Very good. [0:13:12] Steli: But that is, what it is. And with that, I’ll make a promise to myself and a commitment to the listeners that I’ll get back creating more quiet time and thinking time for myself. Because it does. It does do a lot for me for sure. [0:13:30] Hiten: That’s awesome. I can’t see a better way to end it than you being poetic like that. [0:13:36] Steli: All right, that’s it from us for this episode. By the way, if you have profound, or not so profound moments around quiet time, thinking time. If you have anything to share with us, we always love to hear from you so you can get in touch. Steli@close.com. H[inaudible 00:00:13:51]@Gmail.com. Until next time, we’ll see you very soon. [0:13:57] Hiten: See you. [0:13:58] The post 475: Why Founders Need to Schedule Quiet Time to Think Deeply appeared first on The Startup Chat with Steli & Hiten.

In today’s episode of The Startup Chat, Steli and Hiten talk about how to earn the trust of a team you’re taking over as a new manager. Winning over members of a team you just took over is not an easy feat. There’s bound to be resistance from some team members and if you don’t manage the situation well, this can affect how successful you’re going to be as a manager. In this week’s episode, Steli and Hiten talk about what to do when you first take over a team, the importance of making a good first impression, what to do with team members you don’t want on your team and much more.  Time Stamped Show Notes: 00:00 About today’s topic. 00:31 Why this topic was chosen. 00:43 The importance of making a good first impression. 01:05 What to do when you first take over a team. 02:10 The quickest way to fail. 04:07 What to do with team members you don’t want on your team. 05:50 Problems that can arise when you make changes to a team. 06:17 Why it’s important to be upfront with team members. 06:42 How company culture can affect your decisions. 07:19 Why you should use the values the company has to your advantage.  3 Key Points: First impressions matter.Talk to everyone on the team and just learn.Have honest conversations with your team members [0:00:00] 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 what to do or what to recommend this person does when somebody comes in and takes over a team. [0:00:14] Steli Efti: Yeah. [0:00:15] Hiten Shah: This is a great topic. I think this is one where you can do a terrible job coming in and taking over team and you can do a great job. And in some of these cases, I think one of the biggest pieces of advice I’d give somebody who’s in this situation, either advising someone on how to do that in their own company or the person coming in doing it is first impressions matter. And I think that’s a big deal. And also my prescriptive suggestion, regardless of how large the team is, is go talk to everyone on the team and just learn, take lots of notes and understand the lay of the land in terms of that team that you’re taking over. And give the context of I just want to learn. I just want to understand how you folks do things and what’s been going on, what you do here and kind of how you think about it and what are things that you’d like to improve. So really just have a one on one conversation with everybody. Doesn’t matter the size of the team. Obviously thousand person team much harder. So you’ve got that large of a team, congratulations. Well you’ve got this problem happening. Otherwise I would focus on talking to everybody on the team if I were coming into that role or suggesting to someone what they should do. [0:01:33] Steli Efti: I love that. I think that that’s definitely kind of step number one is when you join, you need to be, you’re the most junior person on the team no matter if you’re now their manager, you have to learn, right? Learn about the business, the team, the project, success, failures, culture, the individuals, the people, the team dynamics. There’s so much to learn and if you step in, you want to take over immediately, that is the quickest way to fail. And to also have that entire team once you do fail, right? And feel like you haven’t earned the trust for them to want to follow you. So by being humbled, by listening more than you speak, by learning more than you teach, people will start feeling comfortable. And then when you make a recommendation, when you start taking over, they will know that you’ve done your homework and that you have the proper context to make these decisions. So that makes a ton of sense. Now once you go through this, right? Eventually you’re going to have to probably… There’s a couple of things I have in mind, but let’s start with one of the trickiest things. I’m curious about that. So let’s say you’re a new manager. You talk with the entire team, you spent the time, you do the research, you learn, and there are a few people in that team that you are now managing that you wouldn’t have hired. It’s not the type of people that you would hire. Either they’re not the culture fit for the kind of culture you want to create on the team or their skill set isn’t right or their attitude or whatever else. There’s probably a range, right? There’s maybe some people that you’re like, yeah, this person is fine. I think they’re okay, I can work with them but I’m not super excited. But then there’s new people where you’re just like, I don’t want to work with this person or this is going to cause problems or this person is causing problems. What do you do there as the new manager right? You’ve been around whatever, a month, two months, whatever the period of time is and now you’ve identified that there’s some people that you are officially responsible for that you’re not that excited about. What do you do there? What do you recommend there? [0:03:44] Hiten Shah: Like somebody on the team? [0:03:45] Steli Efti: Yeah because you are now their manager but you didn’t hire them and you come to find out that you wouldn’t have hired them and you actually don’t want them on your team. [0:03:56] Hiten Shah: I see. I mean I think that’s normal. I think that happens quite a bit. And the best way to do that is not make it personal, even though the other person’s going to feel like it’s personal regardless. Because obviously there’s some people on the team that get to stay and others that don’t. So yeah, this is just about having honest conversations with people and sometimes you have to make that transition for them really smooth and a lot of times it has to do with the culture of the company as to what you do about this person. And typically there’s other people in the company that know this person obviously and have worked with them and so you can help them help you figure out how to treat this person and what to do about it, what to do with this person. So I feel like it’s a tough spot. It happens very commonly. And if you’ve gone and talked to everyone individually, I think that can be really helpful because you’ve already started building a rapport and a relationship with them. And then I would use your sort of counterparts in other areas of the business or anyone else that’s worked with this person who you either can trust or feel like has good context to help you navigate that. But this is common. Someone comes in and they start, basically they switch out people, they let go of people, they bring on their people so to speak, things like that. These are all common patterns that happen. The one problem is when this kind of change causes politics and cultural issues and that I see very often because it’s basically what I just said right now, which is like, oh, a new person comes in, they’re bringing in their people. Well what does that even mean? Well, it means that they have people they want in certain roles that they’ve worked with before that they trust for those roles. That’s where I think the sensitivities around human beings, existing business, what’s going on currently in the business and in that area that someone’s managing. That’s where all those things start coming up. Because usually if someone’s taking over an area, it’s not because that area is doing well. It’s usually because the area’s not doing well. [0:06:12] Steli Efti: Not doing well. [0:06:13] Hiten Shah: Yeah. And there’s change that needs to happen. So the more upfront people can be about it, the better the person coming in and just being human, just being like, look, and being real. That being said, all of this gets totally messed up if the culture of the company is not like that and the culture of the company is different in the values and things like that. So the one trick so to speak would be if you joined a company and you’re dealing with this or anything like that, I think my suggestion would be go use the values that the company has and use that to your advantage to help you understand kind of… Here’s what I mean. Whatever the company’s all about, that’s your best anchor for any of these conversations and any of this work. And that’s what I would use all the time inside of a company because at least on a high level, if not a very visceral low level, people in the company understand the culture and the values of the company. So you come in and start with those, you anchor on those. You talk about those, you talk about the changes with those in mind and that’s the best you can do. These are again, those tough decisions, those tough [inaudible 00:00:07:46]. Nobody wants to, I mean most people, majority of people don’t want to come in and let go people. That’s not what they want to do. They want to come in and do their job, right? They want to come in and if it’s marketing they’re taking over, they want to come in and make marketing awesome, right? Make the leads happen or what have you. They don’t want to go in and let go people. They don’t want to have to do that. That being said, if you spent time with all the people in the team, you’re already building that rapport. You’re building that at least familiarity, if nothing else, and then you go just start basically figuring out how to do it. Here’s the funny thing though. My opinion of this is kind of aggressive in the sense of if you’re going to let go of people, do it super fast. Do it as soon as you can because if you’re the person leading that team, I think keeping people who you don’t believe in for that role is detrimental to you and the business and even the organization or the part of the organization you’re trying to run. [0:08:42] Steli Efti: Yeah, and those people. [0:08:44] Hiten Shah: Oh, of course. The way I think about this is if there’s a better place for someone to be than where they are right now, even if where they are right now is in our company and what better place is another company, we got to speak up and make it happen. People should be happy at work and oftentimes you’ll find that people are just not happy and that needs to change, they should be happy, that’s my opinion. They should be happy, as happy as they can be obviously. And even when the days are tough and a lot of times not everyone’s a good fit for your company. [0:09:17] Steli Efti: Totally agree. All right, one last thing I’ll say about this because I think it’s an important point before we wrap up the episode for today is you’re absolutely right with saying when you start, you take over a team as a manager, you don’t want to instantly kind of dictate the agenda and bark orders and change everything and tell everybody how to do things differently now. You want to spend the time to really learn what happened and get the context and build the relationships that are needed to earn the trust as the foundation and to have a context as a foundation to then build on top of and to accomplish all the things that you want to accomplish. That’s absolutely crucial and right. One thing that I’ll say those that some people are too good or stay too long in the, I’m just a learner and I’m just an observer and I’m just building relationships part and they don’t transition into the, I am taking over more and more and more and I am making changes and I’m placing bets and I’m generating wins or new wins that now make the team think, oh, this person is not just trustworthy and a good shoe man and listened to me and cared about me and listen to our learnings and tried to understand what’s going on, this person is now taking over as a leader and is leading us to victories, is leading us to improvements, is helping us accomplish things we haven’t been able to accomplish before, is helping me level up my skill sets growing my career. That’s an important component as well because if you don’t have that, what are you doing there? Right? You’re wasting everybody’s time and money. Yeah, you’re building nice relationships and you’re learning things, but you’re not creating value as a return. And I have seen people be too aggressive with joining and instantly barking orders and thinking they know everything and they can change everything. That will not work. But I’ve also seen the opposite. I’ve seen people join in a management position taking over a new team. At the beginning everybody likes them because they’re super nice and ask a lot of questions and they’re like, I’m just here to learn at first. And then at some point the team starts hating them because they’re like, well, this person is three months in, this person’s still always looking at us for guidance and is like, well, I think we should do this. What is the team thinking? Well, I’ve not been here for many years, so maybe I’m wrong. Just checking with too many people, never making a decision, not creating their own vision, not making changes, not being decisive, not taking over and not generating wins that make the team think, wow, now we’re really a better team under this new leadership and that can be a really bad, kind of a bad way of taking over a team and failing as well. So do you need to kind of find the balance of starting with the humbleness to learn, but then more and more taking over and then leading truly and making changes when the time is right. [0:12:26] Hiten Shah: Yep, absolutely. That’s great. [0:12:30] Steli Efti: All right. This is it for us for this episode. As always, if you enjoyed it and if you’ve been listening to us for a while and haven’t done this yet, do us a favor, take the one minute and go to iTunes, give us five stars, give us a little bit of a review. It would mean a lot to us. We really appreciate it and as always, if you have questions, feedback, concerns, ideas, things you want to share with us, we always love to hear from you steli@close.com, hnshah@gmail.com, we always love to hear from our listeners. Until next time, we’ll see you very soon. [0:13:00] The post 474: How to Earn the Trust of a Team You’re Taking over as a New Manager appeared first on The Startup Chat with Steli & Hiten.

In today’s episode of The Startup Chat, Steli and Hiten talk about death. Losing a loved one is a very painful thing to deal with, and can have a huge impact on a person, especially if the loss happened at a very young age. While there’s no right or wrong way to grieve, there are healthy ways to deal with the grieving process. In today’s episode, Steli and Hiten talk about Steli and Hiten’s personal experiences with death, how death has affected Steli’s view on life, how Steli dealt with the death of his mum and much more.  Time Stamped Show Notes: 00:00 About today’s topic. 00:34 Why this topic was chosen. 01:11 Steli and Hiten’s personal experiences with death. 02:48 How death has affected Steli’s view on life. 05:44 How Hiten thinks about the worst-case scenario first. 06:21 Hiten’s experience with death. 06:57 How expecting the worst can be a good thing. 07:15 How overcoming a tragic situation can strengthen your character. 08:38 How Steli dealt with the death of his mum. 09:43 The impact losing close family members has had on Hiten. 3 Key Points: Once it happens, it’s part of your universe.I think about the worst-case scenario first.If you are expecting the worst, and the worst happens, then you’re in a better position to deal with it. [0:00:00] Hiten Shah: It’s a very good idea to talk to somebody and just bring out their emotions. I’ve done it a couple of times. It’s worked. [0:00:33] Hiten Shah: Today on the Startup Chat with Steli and Hiten and we’re going to talk about death. [0:00:38] Steli Efti: Holy fuck! Elaborate. [0:00:41] Hiten Shah: So both of us, when we were children, a parent passed away and I think that’s impacted how we both think about death. Steli and I have never talked about this before. I didn’t know that about him when I first met him until very recently. So I want to talk about death. My mom died when I was eight. [0:00:58] Steli Efti: My father died when I was six. And also we’re doing this recording on a balcony. There’s airplanes flying and construction work going on. So, just to give you guys some context, but, so my dad died when I was six and I had both of my grandparents die of cancer in our house. So I saw them over years struggle with it, and then ultimately die. So those are the vivid deaths in my life early on. [0:01:22] Hiten Shah: Okay. So when I was eight, my mom actually passed away in her own bed surrounded by everybody she loved basically. There was a house full of people. I don’t even know how many people. I as well watched as I was growing up, my grandfather die of cancer. My mom died of cancer as well, but in our house, same situation. [0:01:43] Steli Efti: So yeah, my dad died in our house. It was very unexpected. So it seemed like he had just a virus or cold, a really bad cold for a few days. And then he died at night in his sleep. So the next morning my mom just thought he was sleeping really long and eventually she figured out that he’s not reacting. And then the whole thing happened. I remember it was a Sunday morning playing with one of my older brother’s Lego, we had a Lego castle or something like that. And we were as quiet as possible because we thought our parents are still sleeping. And then I remember just tidbits of my mom telling us to go to the window and wait for the ambulance to come. And I remember a bunch of commotion and people in and out and everything. And then people started crying and … So then it’s just chopped up little movie clips of what I remember happening. But it was very unexpected for us and it basically had some virus in the heart that basically clogged up the heart. So his heart just stopped beating in his sleep. So a peaceful way to die, but very unexpected for the rest of us. [0:02:47] Hiten Shah: Yeah. So I’ll give some context now, the audience at least has a background. [0:02:52] Steli Efti: I’m not sure if the artist is prepared for this conversation. I’m envisioning people are just like, “I want to be motivated to do something. Call the mailing today.” And then they started like, “What the fuck is this?” [0:03:05] Hiten Shah: All right. But we like to talk about things other people don’t really talk about. That’s part of this. So I think the reason I just wanted to talk about it, it’s something I don’t hear people talk about. I think there’s everything from religion to fear of the unknown, right? That impacts this conversation about deaths. Where does the person go? What happens? Will I ever see them again? And all these other things. That’s not really what I want to talk about though. What I want to talk about is what do you think is done to the way you think about life? [0:03:34] Steli Efti: That’s a great question. So when I was young, I think it made me … Feeling I was young, it messed me up in some very predictable ways. I had a conversation with somebody at a conference a few months ago and she was telling me about her dad died as well. And we discovered that led in the conversation. But one thing that she was saying was parents are the gravitational center of the universe of the children. So when one parent leaves or dies, it messes up the universe of your world and everything needs to be readjusted. And it was funny, she was talking about this experience of her having older siblings that went through the death of a parent and also a death of I think a brother or a sister. And then her and her sister being born after all that tragedy and how different her and her sister were growing up, all being blood kids, upbeat and all excited and how the older siblings were much more serious and not cynical, not as hippy-dippy life is amazing. So it was an interesting conversation to have, but I think that, so a few things that happened with me, number one is I think that I realized that my parents were not for granted. So I started worrying a lot more about my mother and my other siblings in the sense that when my mom was late, death was the first thing that I was thinking about. Like, “Is she dead? Was she in an accident? Did something happen?” Right? [0:05:03] Hiten Shah: At six years old? [0:05:03] Steli Efti: Yeah. So I remember that probably between being six to 14 being a very instant reaction, just like, “Did somebody die that I love?” [0:05:13] Hiten Shah: So you were almost expecting the worst? [0:05:14] Steli Efti: Yes. Or all of the sudden, when you tell your six death and life, all these things are not really playing part. But once it happens it’s then part of your universe, and the way you think about things. [0:05:24] Hiten Shah: So I actually want to … When some people would call double click on that. And so I’ve heard people say that off and on. I thought it was a funny one. But you mentioned it in a way where I think for me at least, I think of the worst case scenario first, still, always, and it doesn’t paralyze me, but it prepares me. It’s almost like an instant preparation of, “Okay, here’s the worst that could happen. We’re not going to optimize for that. We’re not going to focus on that. But at least we know what the worst that could happen is, in that situation.” Right? And I think that, that’s actually a very interesting point, because that’s just instantly where my mind goes and it’s probably for the same reason. I don’t think I was … For lack of a better word, I’m just going to start adding words for you on this. I don’t think I was tortured by it like you were. I was a little bit older, but I also had known my mom was going to pass away for the previous like … Since I could understand anything. So I had known for at least five years, let’s say six years. And so, I find this interesting about founders also in the sense that if you are expecting the worst and the worst happens, but you expected it. You were like, “Okay, I see what that looks like.” You’re already ready for it. And then you can really legitimately say, “What’s the worst that could happen?” So I just wanted to get your thoughts on that because those are the things that I’m thinking of. [0:06:46] Steli Efti: It’s interesting because I think about it I think a little differently in the sense that, I think that when people die that you love, I mean there’s a lot of things that happen, right? Just so you have to deal with the trauma of somebody’s not being around that you love, realizing that life is short. And all that stuff, it seems a little cliche to even save the way I’m seeing it, but I haven’t thought about it deeply enough to have a different way of saying it. But so there’s a bunch of that going on. I think for me, just overcoming that and being able to deal with life after that big traumatic event. Also just adds strength and depth to your character. It’s invisible, I can tell, but when you talk to people, you can tell what the depth of their character is based on the shit they went through life. And for people who didn’t have to go through a lot of shit, these people are hopefully really happy and nice people. But there’s a difference that you can feel that this person just is maybe not as wise, maybe not as deeply rooted in the universe in life. Because they didn’t have to weather so many storms. So think it adds strength. It can add strength or break somebody. We talked about this in a prior episode of about origin stories. So I think that’s one thing. And the other thing is, I went through a journey for many years, I was really afraid, especially about my mother. And then for whatever reason I was able to let that go. So today … I could not, I physically could not live in the US, and do what I do and my mom living in Germany without being paralyzed by fear and guilt. And I don’t have that anymore, because at some point I was able to let that go and not be as afraid. Not that I don’t think about death, but it’s not as present in any moment. And I feel like I’ve made a little bit of, “peace” with that it can happen, but I don’t have to be terrified about it. And it doesn’t have to be the main thing in my life every day. Let me ask you, so going through that experience of losing your mother that early on, how does that impact you? I mean one thing that you said is about the worst case and you really know what the worst case is and how it feels and preparing for that without being paralyzed by it. But then how do you think that influenced the way you live your life? Do you think … Again, for lack of other cliches, do you think that you’ll try to get more out of life because of that? Do you try to spend more time with family because of that? Are you trying to build bigger castles to prove more that you’re worthy of her love? Or what do you think is still an impact of that event of your early childhood in your life today? [0:09:40] Hiten Shah: Yeah, I think on a personal level I can see a gap of something missing in my life that I probably either seek out or seeked out around having that relationship. Right? Because that relationship no longer can be had. That’s on a personal side. I can see all examples of that. But from a more … The way I think about things, I guess it’s a very much sense of peace at all times for me, quite frankly, of … I watch a lot of people pass away that were close family, but also not taking it … So for lack of a better word personally. And so it almost is a detachment. In some ways it could be a bad thing. But for me it’s a detachment of even like in business or anything like that. If there’s an outcome to be had and for some reason it just doesn’t happen, I get over it pretty quickly. So it’s a little bit of a detachment from other things and more of a, “Hey I’m pretty grounded as myself.” So I think I’ve been able to over time put it in a … Not positive light, but be able to use it in that way. Use this event and use it to think about the world as like, “I can actually impact it, but I’m not necessarily so attached to anything.” One of the things that I would say, and I think this is really related to it, I don’t know how you feel about this, but a lot of founders call … Or entrepreneurs or even people that start companies call the company their baby. And recently I had to … For the most part operating role and even … I’ve had to detach from one of my companies Kissmetrics, because it was just time and I think I’ve been asked that, “Hey, so you had to give up on your baby or you had to let your baby go?” Or whatever. And I’m like, “It was never my baby. It’s not mine. It’s the world. I helped create it, but it’s this other entity out there.” Right? Just like your kid. Yeah, your kid will always be your baby. But that’s because you remember over they’re a kid, I mean they’re not always going to be a baby and they’re independent. [0:11:37] Steli Efti: Let me ask you about the detachment. So this is an interesting thing because one thing that I picked up on you is that although you are a really … And this might be a misinterpretation, maybe I’m projecting. Because I think this is something I find to be very true with myself. [0:11:59] Hiten Shah: Go for it. [0:12:00] Steli Efti: So think that you’re a really open guy on one end, but I feel that … I also have the feeling that you’re a guy that keeps a certain distance to anything and everything and anyone. So maybe that’s where that detachment comes from. So I wonder, I’ll tell you how I am and then I’ll love to hear if you feel similarly. And if that’s an entrepreneurial thing or not. I’m curious. [0:12:22] Hiten Shah: Yeah, go for it. [0:12:23] Steli Efti: So I seem pretty, I think warm and I’m trying to be, live a very authentic and honest life and I can share lots of things with lots of people and try to help lots of people. I have lots of friends, all that good shit, but I deal with my problems with myself. Literally if I have a big problem, just in general in my entire life, I would never just let go to my brothers or my mother or friends. Anyone will be like, “I’m really having this issue and I’m really struggling with it.” I would always deal with it myself. I would listen to other people’s problems for my entire life, but I would not share as openly. And for a while I was like, “Maybe I need to practice sharing these things.” And I tried it, and it was not as fulfilling. It felt fake. Like I’m just saying it to say it, and I’m listening to listen. But I’m not really getting anything from it. And for the last few years I stopped doing that, and I’m starting to experiment again with it. And there’s some interesting things that are going on when I asked for help or when I share some problems I have and I feel like very much I’m a newbie and I’m trying to figure out an angle for this, for my life because I literally for like 30 years out of the 33, I always dealt with my problems by myself, not asking anyone. It doesn’t matter what kind of problems. I would suspect you are smiling and nodding while it was saying it. So I suspect that you can relate to this. That’s the feeling that I have too. It’s we’re becoming good friends, but I also have the sense that we could be friends for 20 years, and I would not know if you ever went through some serious shit because you just deal with it yourself. [0:14:00] Hiten Shah: Yeah. I’m pretty much the same way. I try to deal with my own shit myself. Honestly, I probably have taken it pretty far where unless it’s really awful, I probably wouldn’t even tell my wife. Right? [0:14:12] Steli Efti: Same here. [0:14:12] Hiten Shah: And yeah, just whatever, right? Probably leads us to talking less to be honest. But I think part of it, is there’s a philosophy of stoicism, or whatever and stuff like that. So if you studied that, I bet it could map to this. I haven’t really studied it and looked into it because whatever. But I think that … You were asking, well one, I’m glad you brought that up because I was one of the reasons I wanted to talk about this, but I didn’t know how to articulate it as well as you did. So it’s the idea of when you have problems, even really large ones, most people would go talk to somebody about it, talk to their friend, talk to whoever. Yeah. I don’t do that either. It sounds like you don’t. But one thing about that, you said two things. One, yes, I think it is a founder trait personally and I’ll explain why. But the other thing I wanted to check in on that you said was, you said that you don’t seek help from other people and now you’re trying to learn how to do that. [0:15:10] Steli Efti: Yeah. [0:15:11] Hiten Shah: I don’t know if it’s ironic or not. But ironically, I’ve been going through the same thing where I’ve been trying to figure out, how do I ask someone for help or even feedback or whatever in a way that actually helps me. Because at this point I think I’ve found my own ways and systems that are very internal, introverted, so to speak. I guess. So, yeah. So I think I’m going through that and it’s been very difficult. [0:15:35] Steli Efti: Let me tell you a discovery that I made with this. So for the first time around where I try to practice going to my friends and family with my problems, even if I don’t think they can help me, just to do it. I think that what I was focusing on was … All right, I’m going to share this to do it and then I know you probably can help me fix this problem, but let’s do it anyways because for some reason it’s weird that I’m never doing this, right? And we’re going to … Let’s break the format and make this a little longer episode. [0:16:11] Hiten Shah: Yeah. Let’s do it. [0:16:12] Steli Efti: I think this one warrants it. So what was happening was I would go into these conversations very mechanically, saying things to see them, listening to the reaction, just to listen and then going, “Yeah, Kevin knew that this would not be helpful.” Right? So confirming that, this shit is a lot of work for me and it doesn’t really pay any dividends. So maybe it just doesn’t work for me, like for everybody else. And I made peace with that from hot moment. And now I’m rediscovering this topic from a new perspective. So here’s what’s happening now. What’s happening now is that, I started going with my problems or challenges to friends, not to everybody, but to a few people that I trust on a very deep level. Even if I think they can’t help me with it, but not focusing on them being able to help me with it. My focus now is not on the rational level or what’s the solution to this? My focus just started being more on the emotional level of I just want to say it and feel it, right? Just be authentic in that moment and feel the pain, the confusion, whatever I have. And have an outlet to be able to feel it with somebody else. And then, and this may be as a very feminine way of approaching problems versus a masculine way. It’s always just a rational in fixing problems. But, so I started sharing these things, not expecting a solution back from somebody, just expecting- [0:17:42] Hiten Shah: Empathy maybe. [0:17:43] Steli Efti: Maybe empathy. But even more importantly, I’m not really looking to the other side for confirming and feeling it. I’m just looking- [0:17:51] Hiten Shah: You just want to put it out there in the world? [0:17:52] Steli Efti: Yeah. I’m just trying to create a moment where I can really feel it and stay with that feeling for moment with somebody else that I trust and I feel safe with. And then see what happens. And you know the crazy thing since I’ve started approaching it this way, not every time, but a surprisingly high number of times, the conversations were really good and even a solution would come up or clarity that I would not have had before. Just because I’m not focusing on it and it’s not really the important thing. And I’ve started coming out of these conversation going, “Oh shit! I now get it. I do get why this is really could be helpful even for me.” So it’s an interesting, a new approach and I see different results and I’m starting to do change in this regard and ask more for help, dealing with more problems involving people in my life versus trying to deal with all the problems by myself. [0:18:50] Hiten Shah: That’s awesome. I’m going to start sharing my feelings more. It’s good, yeah. [0:18:56] Steli Efti: And I don’t know, it’s weird. It’s not even just the, let me talk about how horrible I feel. It’s just, let me talk about this issue. But I don’t expect a solution from you and I don’t expect you to know more about this than me and I don’t expect anything. All I want to do is, I think it’s healthy for me to externalize it, to put it out there, to feel it and to stay with it for a moment. And just by having somebody I trust, we can stay with the emotion and with what’s going on for a moment. And it’s not just in my head. [0:19:24] Hiten Shah: That makes sense. Let’s talk about founders. [0:19:27] Steli Efti: So what can founders learn from all this? [0:19:29] Hiten Shah: I think it’s … You were asking earlier if this is a pattern with founders of solving their own problems or solving them internally. You just expressed an idea of how to put it out there, which I think is great. And so instead of focusing on someone helping you, focus on getting your feelings out there, right? And it’s easier to do that with a person around, right? Otherwise you’re talking to a mirror or something. So I think with founders, there’s so many decisions that founders, even executive in a company for example, have to make, and if you go seek feedback on every single decision, then you just won’t make them fast enough. And at some point, founders, I know they ended up realizing that it is decisions and it is how fast you make them. Even more so than I’m being right. So I think it’s a quality that definitely translates, which is you’re solving your own problems and you’re doing it hopefully fast, but also not getting all stressed out or not having to get feedbacks from other people for every problem. I think the thing where it can go wrong, and I’ve seen this too, is you don’t ask feedback on anything. Because there’s some things that someone does know and they can give you an answer in five minutes instead of you even trying something. So I think there’s a good balance, but overall on a high level, founders need to make hard decisions and if you can make them on your own without feedback, you’re going to make them faster. That’s a good thing. [0:20:48] Steli Efti: I agree. I think everything in life is about balance. So this balance is tough. I think on the one hand, founders need to be decisive, right? And they need to be … Part of being decisive, the crazy thing about being decisive as a founder is that, you know, if you’ve been a founder for more than a minute, that there’s a good chance you’re wrong, but you still need to be okay with making that decision and being wrong. But being fully determined with executing on that decision right now and being still open enough to know that maybe in a week or a month or a year you might have to change your mind about this. I think that, that’s the tough thing. At the same time, I think it’s important for founders to be in touch with their emotional household because the way you feel in the states you’re in, will influence the quality of your work and the quality of your thoughts and the quality of your decision making and the communication you have with others. And if you’re totally out of touch with that emotional household and you’re just in your head, then a lot of times the decisions you’re going to be making are going to be poor and the way you communicate them is going to be poor, and it’s just going to create a lot of friction and problems. So I think it’s a worthwhile exercise for founders to have some mechanism to being in touch with how you feel and what state you’re in. And when you get to a point where you’re like, “We had an episode about being overwhelmed.” When you realize, “Oh shit! I’m overwhelmed, over the last few days.” To be able to step back and make some decisions on it, or have some outlet to get that out of your system and get clarity on what to do to adjust. Overwhelm is one, fear is another, doubt is another. There’s many emotions that are shit for you to have. If you’re a founder. That will make your job a lot harder and make you a lot worse at your job. So I think it’s important for all of us to just a, learn to explore emotions better, but also learn to find ways to be in touch with them and then react to them. And maybe for some people that’s talking to good friends, maybe for others, it’s doing something else. But I think it’s really important for a founder to be in control of their emotional household. [0:22:48] Hiten Shah: Yeah. And so your tip would be talk to someone with feelings in mind. Instead of with feedback in mind. [0:22:54] Steli Efti: Yes. [0:22:54] Hiten Shah: I like that. I said your tip. So what’s my tip? [0:22:57] Steli Efti: I think your tip is why we did this topic on today’s episode. Is when something is on your mind bothering you or keeping you busy. Or if there’s some topic that you feel like there’s something here for me to be explored. I know that I want to deal with this and I know that this is an interesting thing, even if it’s hard, you talk about it and you seek somebody out to talk about this. And death is an interesting topic because it’s part of your life and mine and you bringing it up as a thing for us to talk about is your way of dealing with it and talking about it, and exploring it. So I think we both have the same tip. Whatever is on your mind, find somebody … Or at least experiment with it. Even if you’re not convinced, why not give it a try and go, “I’ll experiment going to somebody and talking about this.” And seeing on an emotional level, maybe not as much rational this time. On an emotional level, what does that do to me? Does that help me gain balance? Does it help me be in touch with my own emotions? Does it just feel good? Just zoom in on the emotion side of conversing with somebody, talking with somebody about your problems and challenges and see how that helps you and what that does to you, the quality of your work and what you’re doing. [0:24:15] Hiten Shah: I like it. I think especially for people in a normally high stressful situations. Having to be running a company, starting a company, managing a team, whatever. It’s a very good idea to talk to somebody and just bring out the emotion. I’ve done it a couple times. It’s worked, so I think I always forget about that., [0:24:35] Steli Efti: All right. So here’s what we’re going to end this episode with. Number one, go to the startup chat.com, there’s a box where you can put in your email address. I want you to do that. The reason for that is that we’re going to start sharing some special episodes like this one, and maybe some other ones only with the people on our email list. We create a lot more content than two episodes a week, so we’re going to start picking and choosing some episode we think are only for the hardcore Startup Chat nation, community, family, something. Only people that really listen to this regularly will want to hear and would get something out of. That’s number one. Number two, go to the startup chat.com/fb that sends with Facebook, to join our Facebook group and be able to talk to each other and help each other out and find some other founder that can keep you accountable or that you can talk about your challenges and problems. Just a safe outlet. This is an exclusive Facebook group only for the listeners here and it could be a really great place for all of us to build a community around. And then last but not least, if you are going through some shit right now, and you’re lacking anyone else that you think you could talk about the emotional side of it, why not just talk to us? Send us an email, tweet at us to Hiten and Steli, and let us know. We’ll jump on a call with you and we’ll chat with you. [0:25:50] Hiten Shah: One last thing. Thank you for everyone that’s given us feedback and reached out or even ask for help. That’s exactly why we’re here. [0:25:57] Steli Efti: Absolutely. We love you. We’ll love that. So keep it coming. Give us feedback. Tell us what’s going on. Let’s make this a two way street. It’s not just about the two of us, so please do it. We really love it and appreciate it highly. All right. That’s it from us today. Take care guys. The post 473: Encore Episode: What Founders Can Learn from Death appeared first on The Startup Chat with Steli & Hiten.

Today on The Startup Chat, Steli and Hiten talk about how even seasoned founders can feel like first-time founders. Starting a new company can be scary. It doesn’t matter if it’s your first company or you’re started a couple in the past, you never know if your new venture is going to be successful or not, and this can cause us to feel insecure or scared In today’s episode of the show, Steli and Hiten talk about how starting something new can be exciting, Hiten’s experience with starting companies, what to spend your time on when you’re starting something and much more. Time Stamped Show Notes: 02:15 About today’s topic 02:45 Why this topic was chosen. 04:29 How starting something new can be exciting. 05:31 Hiten’s experience with starting companies. 06:33 How Hiten handles pressure and insecurities. 07:25 Questions to ask yourself if you’re feeling insecure. 08:31 How starting a new company can be a totally new experience. 10:37 The danger of spending too much time on things that are comfortable. 11:38 Advice on what to spend your time on when you’re starting something. 3 Key Points: When you start something new, you don’t know anything.There’s a lot of beauty in the feeling of starting something new.I can’t know right now if it’s going to be bigger or better than the last one. [0:00:00] Hiten Shah: … If you’re fearful of it, like you’re just thinking about it in a way that makes you fearful, so you’d probably need to think about it a different way so you can just stop being paralyzed. Because usually fear paralyzes and then there is no momentum. So- [0:00:34] Steli Efti: Hey guys, this is Hiten Shah and Steli Efti with our awesome podcast, The World’s Best Business Podcast, the startup chat. I don’t know exactly what we finally decided on, but we’re still kind of coming up with the best possible name. At this time I’m still in Europe traveling and Hiten is in a car driving to… Where are you driving to Hiten? [0:00:57] Hiten Shah: I’m actually on my way home. [0:00:58] Steli Efti: Oh, that’s nice. That’s awesome. So from where? From where are you driving home? [0:01:04] Hiten Shah: I came to San Francisco for a couple of meetings and now I’m going back home. I live in the peninsula, which is between San Francisco and Palo Alto, in the middle. [0:01:12] Steli Efti: Awesome. It’s midnight right now here in Berlin. I had a very full day of conference talks, workshops, meet-and-greets, hiring interviews, and now I’m at the peak of my day which is having the podcast with you before I walk my way over to the other apartment and hit the bed, hit the pillow. [0:01:34] Hiten Shah: That’s awesome. So I’m assuming you guys have one apartment to work, one apartment to sleep- [0:01:39] Steli Efti: Exactly right. [0:01:40] Hiten Shah: … And all that? [0:01:40] Steli Efti: Yeah. Exactly right. [0:01:41] Hiten Shah: Oh that’s cool. [0:01:41] Steli Efti: And you know what, today they did a big thing in Berlin they call Startup SAFARI where they do open offices of all the startups and everybody that wants to work at a startup can just go. They bus these people from startup office to startup office. And we got included in that. So people came in, arrived at our Airbnb apartment. So a Silicon Valley startup working in a Berlin Airbnb loft. [0:02:07] Hiten Shah: They must have loved it. That’s awesome. [0:02:09] Steli Efti: It was a lot of fun. People definitely had fun and we did so too. All right. What are we going to talk about today, Hiten? What do we want to talk about? [0:02:17] Hiten Shah: Yeah, this is my topic, I guess, maybe. So I have this thing where, I have a friend and I was just hanging out with them on the weekend which is usually rare for me. And he has a startup, and he’s a company I invested in and I advise. And he’s a longtime veteran at a sort of corporate company, but very startupy thinking-type person. And so he just started his company. His company is about 12 people. It started officially probably more like earlier this year, so four months ago, let’s say. And he made this comment and he kept making this comment over the last couple of months I’ve known him and I finally just came to a conclusion about it and that’s what I wanted to talk about. So he made this comment, his comment was, “Hey, it’s my first time. And so, you know, I don’t know, right? I mean everything’s crazy. I don’t know.” And then he kept saying that every time he wanted my advice. And what had got me thinking is because right now, specifically, I’m starting technically at least my fourth company. I probably lost count. But if you look at companies I can name this is technically the fourth one, although it’s been around a little bit. But we’re starting it. We’re building a team, we’re trying to actually build product and stuff like that. And all I could tell him, and I think he understood this now because it just kept bugging me that he said it, is, I told him, “Look, the feeling you have is the same exact feeling I have. I just don’t say, ‘Oh it’s my first time.’ That’s the only difference.” And the feeling I’m talking about is when you start something new, you don’t know anything. There’s a lot of assumptions you’re making. A lot of risk, a lot of uncertainty. And I think it’s unnatural. And that’s why we try to come to some sort of realization or conclusion and thought process around it in our heads like, “Oh, it’s my first time.” I told him, “Hey dude, that feeling doesn’t go away. Every time you start something new, that’s that dramatic of, like involves that much uncertainty, you don’t know. It’s like having a baby, right? Like it’s your first time having a baby.” “Okay. All right.” Well the second time you got two down, you know, like what are you going to do? [0:04:15] Steli Efti: And you the funny thing is, there’s a lot of beauty in that feeling when you’re starting something new obviously, you’re not really, you don’t have to deal with the messiness of something that’s already been around for a while, and grew and is messy in its history and has bad decisions being made. You don’t have to deal with any of that. It’s got a clean slate. So on the one side it’s exciting and beautiful and fresh and everything, it’s just potential and everything this could ever be, and you don’t have to deal with all the problems that usually come down the line as you’re growing something and seeing it evolve. But at the same time, you’re nervous, right? And you don’t know. And as you said, it’s not like the second or third child, you’re totally relaxed and it’s like, “Well I already had two children, so who cares?” You’re still nervous. Obviously you’re a little bit more in routine and you know how to deal with certain situations, but there’s still nervousness, there’s still risks and there’s a lot of unknowns and you still have to deal with that and face it every single time from you. [0:05:16] Hiten Shah: Yeah, and it’s not like most people start companies every day. Most people don’t even can start companies every year. It’s usually like every decade or half decade, you know? Maybe every three years, some people. And so all kinds of things change. Like, the way I would start a company though, I started my first one, my second one, my third one and even this one, it’s all completely different. Even the way I think about it is different, but yet that feeling that it’s uncertain and I don’t know anything, it comes right back and you’re just like, “Oh shit. [crosstalk 00:05:42].” [0:05:43] Steli Efti: And also, let me ask you this. So a lot of times at the beginning people think, “Well, this is the very first time I start a business.” So obviously they’re a little nervous and also insecure in their own opinions and decision making and like, “Am I doing this right? Am I making the right choices?” All that. And they look over to somebody like you for instance, and they think, “Well, Hiten has done this multiple times. He’s a veteran. He has certainty. He knows that every one of his decisions is probably right.” But let me ask you, how do you feel about the pressure? Because you have a brand and you have done a few things very successfully. What are the pressures and insecurities you have? Are you plagued by thinking, “This needs to be bigger than my last thing,” or, “I better have success with this because all these people are taking advice from me and I’m a known brand and I don’t want to have a big failure.” What is the side of the coin that people don’t know about that you have to face as somebody that’s been a veteran entrepreneur and also somebody that has a brand and is really well known and a lot of people look up to? [0:06:46] Hiten Shah: Yeah, I love that question. And I think, I don’t know, in general, whenever I feel fear… So a lot of those things you said were fear, right? Like, “Oh this won’t be as large as Kissmetrics or Crazy Egg or whatever.” I flip it around and say, “No, that’s not rational. Like it’s not… I don’t know. I don’t know. Like I can’t know right now if it’s going to be bigger or better than the last one.” All I can do is know that that’s important to me and do something about it. So the way I think about it is like, okay, I actually think about what are the things that made, and this is if you have a last thing, but what are the things that made the last thing not as big as I wanted it to be? Because obviously I have a desire to make this one bigger. So, and, what can I control right now to prevent that? You know? So that’s one thing. Another thing I want to touch on is in the specific one I’m talking about, it’s a company called QuickSprout. It’s my co-founder’s blog. It’s a very popular blog. And now that he’s developed it really far and we’re even making some money, but not with software. It’s what I call my turn to come in and start building software because that’s what I do. And that’s what I love to do. So we’re building software and we first thought, “Oh this might be like Crazy Egg. Let’s go outsource a majority of the development.” Because we actually outsource a lot of development at Crazy Egg for all kinds of reasons I won’t get to get into this in this show, but probably, it’s for another podcast. But, and we thought we were going to run it like that and we started running it like that and then we realized, “Oh no, there’s all these issues with it and if we do it like that we might not be able to make it as big as we’d like knowing what we know now. And so maybe we need to hire people in-house. We need to hire some people and actually deal with building a team and getting these people to be part of the team and all that kind of stuff.” So we actually just recently flipped the script and now we’re thinking about more hiring internal people that are full-time people because it’s a lot different. And I didn’t think that just two months ago. And I had to make all these changes all of a sudden and we had to think about it a little bit differently. So, that whole uncertainty, that whole feeling of “Oh, you could do it like you use…” Like you can take something you’ve learned before and do it and not, and it’s the same, is totally a fallacy. We had to be open to change or I believe we would not be building the type of business we want to build. And so the past and your experience only tells you what you know, or what you think you know. It doesn’t really tell you anything else. [0:09:03] Steli Efti: So let me ask you this, and you know what’s funny? If you could see what I see right now, it’s the most ridiculous thing ever. There’s a bunch of people that came back, it’s midnight, it’s almost 1:00 AM in Berlin. And a bunch of my teammates came back and it’s hard to tell, but I would say that they had some alcohol in their system. So there is one guy that’s trying to stop them from doing stupid things and being loud because they know we’re recording a podcast, and then there’s a group of people that are fighting the good force. It’s good versus evil right in front of me right now. All right, so enough of that distraction. So let me ask you something else. I had a discussion today. I did a sales workshop for startups in Berlin and they were asking a lot about the, “Why are we all trying to avoid to do the messy things early on?” Why we’re all spending all this time coming up with the logo, and a nice new brand, setting up the blog, doing research, putting together PowerPoint slides, instead of going out and talking to customers, trying to close a customer before we build something? Trying to go out there in the real world as quickly as possible and do the things that don’t scale, quote unquote. And that might be a little unpleasant versus just sitting in front of your screen and doing the things that are cool and exciting and safe and nice. And just by asking that question, I mean, in the phrasing of the question, a lot of the answers are there already. But that’s something that’s fascinating me about like when you start fresh, there’s always the danger of spending too much time on things that are comfortable. Like how do we think about that? What’s your advice to people that are thinking of making that leap, taking that step, starting something new? It doesn’t matter if it’s the very first time that they start something or it’s the second or 10th time. But the danger with new being not wanting to face reality in the real world and spending too much time on things that might not truly matter. What’s your thinking on that? [0:10:59] Hiten Shah: Yeah, as a sales person I think you can probably guess my thinking, but I’ll let you talk about that perspective because I know you have a perspective on it. But from my perspective, I call myself a “professional purple bruise poker.” So if I see a purple bruise, I just want to poke it. I want to push, I want to touch it, I want you to have pain, right? And the reason for that is if there’s a bruise, if there’s something that that’s hard and painful that you’re just not willing to do, it’s likely that you should be doing it. And so to me it’s just about finding that thing that’s hard to do and doing that. And I think when you’re starting out and even to your question to that question you got, it’s so easy to do these things that aren’t even bruises, these are the things that don’t even matter. Because they’re not hard. And you’re just avoiding the hard thing. The hard thing is getting a customer to pay you money without a product. But the right thing to do is doing that. [0:11:56] Steli Efti: So when you say “hard,” I think we have to differentiate between complex and hard, right? So there’s things that people want to do that are complex, meaning they’re intellectually interesting, and let’s set something up that’s really hard or that is intellectually complex. But then there’s things that are hard. And hard really oftentimes speaks to the emotional side more than to the rational side of things. Hard is going to somebody and not just saying, “Do you like my idea?” but saying, “Are you willing to give me money?” Right? And then seeing somebody look at you and go, “No, I kind of like it, but not enough to want to give you money for it.” Right? Hey my man are you still there? [0:12:37] Hiten Shah: Yeah, I’m here. [0:12:37] Steli Efti: Oh, I thought I lost you for a second. You know, driving in the car I wasn’t sure. So I think that “hard” is speaking to the, like, jumping over your fears, going over your discomfort internally, over your hesitations. Doing things or facing reality, facing rejection, seeing people tell you they don’t like what you have or they’re not understanding how to use the product versus talking about things theoretically in a way that is safe and allows a lot of people to tell you that they like you and they want to support you. And yes, keep going on with this awesome idea of yours. But really nothing has been accomplished in that conversation other than you getting some false encouragement. [0:13:12] Hiten Shah: I’m going to give a really dumb way to think about this, like it’s super dumb- [0:13:16] Steli Efti: Awesome. [0:13:17] Hiten Shah: … But it works for me. [0:13:17] Steli Efti: I love dumb. [0:13:18] Hiten Shah: It’s really dumb. It’s really dumb. [0:13:20] Steli Efti: Good! [0:13:20] Hiten Shah: And the dumb way I think about this is, every business needs customers for it to make money, and the sooner you get those customers, the better. Otherwise you’re going to have to go figure out how to get those customers later. So would you rather go figure out how to get those customers now, or later? I’d rather go figure it out now because I know if I don’t have customers, I don’t have a business. [0:13:40] Steli Efti: I think the way you think about this is totally backwards. I think this is the reason why we get along so well, because this dumb way of thinking makes total sense if you step back and you go, “What is the reason a business exists in the first place?” If it’s not about the customers, why the hell do you exist at all? Right? It’s not about somebody where you create so much more value than what you are asking a return of, that’s the whole basis of even creating a business to begin with. [0:14:09] Hiten Shah: That’s right. [0:14:10] Steli Efti: All right, so we talked about, it never gets easier, right? No matter how many times you start new, it’s always… New is new for everyone. It doesn’t matter how many times you approach something. Although I would say that you do have some advantages, right? You do have some pattern recognition, some experiences, some skill that you’re able to put into it. [0:14:30] Hiten Shah: The uncertainty is no different. That’s my point. Basically the uncertainty of starting something, regardless of if you’ve done it before, is no different than the first time. There’s still all these things you know nothing about. [0:14:41] Steli Efti: Do we have any tips for people on how to deal with that uncertainty? [0:14:45] Hiten Shah: Just don’t. Don’t deal with it. Don’t worry about it. Don’t think about it. Just figure out what’s fundamental. And what’s fundamental? You already said it, getting customers. [0:14:53] Steli Efti: I love that. I love that because it speaks to the power that you give or you take away from certain limiting emotions, right? So I love to think about, like the difference between fear and excitement is just context. It’s the way you think about it, right? But it’s the same emotions, the same kind of internal energy that you feel and the question just is are you going to use it to expose it and to do something productive or not? And in this specific case, when you say just “don’t deal with it,” the awesome thing about that is that if you’re trying to suppress it, it’s only going to get bigger. If you make a big deal out of that uncertainty and that emotion, it’s only going to get bigger. But if you just tell yourself, “You know what, I feel uncertainty,” who gives a shit? “Let me still go on and do this. I feel a little uncertain about, is this the right idea? Should I go with option A or B? Whatever. Who gives a shit? Let me just take one and if it’s the wrong one I’ll correct it down the line.” If you don’t make a big deal out of it and you just keep going on anyways, magic happens because as you are active, things happen and those things that happen create results. These results give you data about what to do more of and what to do less of, and all of a sudden you build momentum. And all you have to do is just get over yourself and don’t be stopped or slowed down by that level of uncertainty. Just go, “Everybody feels this way. I’ll just keep moving on although I feel uncertain.” And that’s all it is. [0:16:11] Hiten Shah: Yeah. Even the reason I love this topic is my buddy kept telling me this, every time I saw him, every time I text message him, every time I talk to me, he’s like, “Oh, this is my first time.” I’m like, “Dude, is it your first time breathing air?” So yeah, it’s just so funny how we just want to believe we’re special, right? And we’re in this situation and it’s our first time. It’s like, ah, everything, you’re doing something for the first time every day, guaranteed. Even if it’s stepping on dog shit for the first time, right? Whatever. Right? So, I don’t know, I think this uncertainty thing, and I love the way you thought about it, which is if you’re fearful of it you’re just thinking about it in a way that makes you fearful. So you probably need to think about it a different way so you can just stop being paralyzed. Because usually fear paralyzes and then there is no momentum. So yeah, I hate those feelings or those thoughts or those things people say that paralyze them. It’s like, “Hey, that’s not effective. That’s not going to help you do your job. But you constantly thinking about this as the first time, it’s not going to help you do anything. It’s actually probably de-habilitating you. It’s making you seek too much feedback. Too much advice.” [0:17:17] Steli Efti: Oh yeah. Because you’re so uncertain you don’t want to make any mistakes and you go and overcompensate because of it, right? You go and try to get too much advice, read too many articles, read many books, ask for too many people’s feedback and input, and all it does is, because people are going to give you conflicting advice and conflicting points of views, it’s only going to make it worse, right? You get more and more data that doesn’t tell you exactly and safely what to do next. [0:17:43] Hiten Shah: That’s right. Yeah. And I see this all the time. It’s like the biggest pattern out there, what you just described. [0:17:49] Steli Efti: All right, my man. Let’s end this with a tip. You want to go first? Let’s give one actionable piece of advice for people that are listening to this podcast to take away from. [0:17:57] Hiten Shah: Why don’t you go first? [0:17:59] Steli Efti: I knew you would say that. [0:18:00] Hiten Shah: After you! After you Steli. [0:18:01] Steli Efti: Ah after you sir. [0:18:02] Hiten Shah: After you! [0:18:02] Steli Efti: You’re so kind Hiten. You’ve been so good to me. [0:18:05] Hiten Shah: Oh yeah. [0:18:05] Steli Efti: All right. [0:18:06] Hiten Shah: Hell yeah. [0:18:06] Steli Efti: Well, here’s my advice to you. And it’s about managing and dealing with those emotions. When you feel super nervous, super fearful, super hesitant. When you have lots of energy, especially when you’re nervous. Nervousness is a good one. Take that energy that’s inside you and instead of trying to contain it, just think of it as energy that needs to be released. So when you feel nervous before you go to talk to an investor or a customer, or before you go on a stage and present a demo or something, just speak louder, be more animated. Just use that energy and let it out, versus trying to contain it and then see how it’s going to slowly but surely cripple you. Just use the energy of nervousness to be more animated, louder, and more seemingly passionate to the outside world than ever before, and that energy can really serve you. [0:18:53] Hiten Shah: So I think Steli just shared his secret sauce. It’s basically be more like Steli when you feel nervous, just fucking, just go out there, just say it. Be more energetic. I love that. That’s a patented Steli maneuver. It’s probably how he lives his life, if you have ever met him or heard him talk. [0:19:09] Steli Efti: I try. I try to. [0:19:11] Hiten Shah: I love it. So I got a tip that’s kind of related, but probably more introverted. I think you’re the extrovert if I’m the introvert, if we want to go there. I don’t even know if I’m an introvert, but whatever. So my advice would be, when you have fear and whatever, any of those feelings around being paralyzed from taking action. That’s the way I would describe it. And we all feel that all the time, like I’m sure. The thing I like to think about is, Steli mentioned it earlier, it’s called momentum. So just find a way to get momentum. And I think the biggest thing that I’ve seen is that people think they need to do something really big and grandiose as a next step. So to me… Just earlier today I was like, “Hey,” I was talking to someone and she was telling me about one of her problems and I’m like, “Hey, what if you just do this one thing, this really small dumb thing. Why don’t you just email somebody about it?” And even an email will help you take action. It’ll help you start building the momentum. Or even if you’re trying to build a product and get a customer, write a blog post instead that’s about the problem. You don’t have to take the full on, 10 steps out there thing or the big heavy step. You can just take a small step and that momentum builds on itself. And I think that would be my tip, which is just think of it as a baby step. Don’t never, you know, like crawling versus even trying to figure out how to walk or run when you’re not ready. Just anything to get momentum. [0:20:27] Steli Efti: Momentum is key my man. I couldn’t agree more. I hope you guys enjoyed the podcast. Take a lot away from it. Tweet us. Tweet at Hiten and Steli. Let us know what you think of the podcast. Tell us about your first time. Tell us about your nervousness. Are you starting something now? Have you just started something? Just share your experiences with us and we’ll hear and talk to you again more in the next podcast. [0:20:52] Hiten Shah: Yep. [0:20:53] Steli Efti: All right. [0:20:53] Hiten Shah: See you. [0:20:54] Steli Efti: Bye-bye. [0:20:55] Voice Over: Did you pick one of the two action items from Steli and Hiten already? Do that now and snap into action. It’s time to grow your business. [0:21:02] The post 472: Encore Episode: Even Seasoned Founders Feel like First-Time Founders appeared first on The Startup Chat with Steli & Hiten.

In today’s episode of The Startup Chat, Steli and Hiten talk about not dedicating enough time to your most important customers & team members. As a founder, you have to decide what to spend your time, energy, and money on. This can be from customers, team members to investors. To be a successful founder, you need to decide what’s worth your time and what isn’t, and even more importantly, when to cut your losses. So in this episode, Steli and Hiten talk about why you shouldn’t spend too much energy on people that are not working out, how to decide how much time to invest in something, how to work with challenging customers and much more. Time Stamped Show Notes: 00:00 About the topic of today’s episode 00:32 Why this topic was chosen. 03:33 Why you shouldn’t spend too much energy on people that are not working out. 04:00 How to decide how much time to invest in something. 05:10 When to cut your losses with a customer.  06:20 Why you should ensure that you spend most of your time with your most successful customers. 07:30 How to work with challenging customers. 09:34 The importance of understanding how to help your customers. 09:14 How most people put in so much energy in things that are not working. 10:44 How to decide what to spend your energy on. 3 Key Points: There’s very few people who spend time on the right things when it comes to people.If it’s a bad fit customer, it might just be a better use of your time to refer them to someone else.Find your most successful customers and ensure you spend time on them. [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 The Startup Chat we’re going to talk about this phenomenon in business of spending most of your time with employees and customers that aren’t working out and neglecting your superstars. You’re rock stars, the best employees, the most successful people on your team, the happiest and most successful customers. So recently I had a conversation where this came up again, but it’s been a theme and it’s been on my mind for over a decade now. I’ve noticed this in my own businesses. I’ve noticed this in many other people’s companies where I think it’s natural that we all spend or invest most of our attention where there’s conflict, where there are problems, right? So if you’re managing a team and there’s somebody not working quite out at that well in that team, that person is going to consume a lot of your attention, a lot of your energy, a lot of your time and you’re going to coach them more, spend more time with them, look over more of their work, worry more about them, talk more to them. And maybe at some point you part ways, but you’ll give them a ton of your energy and time. And then the people that just crush it, the people that are kind of just superstars doing their own thing, over delivering on all the numbers, just showing that they don’t need, you know, they’re not struggling, they’re thriving, right? They don’t need a lot of your handholding. And with those people, oftentimes we just don’t spend any time with him. And maybe it’s even more dramatic in customers, right? The customers that complain the loudest that are the unhappiest you might take a plane fly to them, spend a lot of time one on one with them. Your team is going to worry a lot about them. There’s going to be lots of internal discussions about that customer, what to do and how to help them. And then there’s a bunch of customers that are just happily paying you full price, right? Never complain about a thing, never sending you an email, never ask for a discount or for a handout and you happily ignore these people or just don’t even realize they exist. I think that there’s a real cost to this, there’s a real downside to this in business. So I just wanted to chat with you a little bit about this. Am I crazy or is this really as common as I think it is and is it a problem or is it totally fine and should companies and startups and founders do anything about it? I’m just curious to hear your thoughts on this. [0:02:33] Hiten Shah: I think it’s a thing. I think we tend to want to fix problems and if someone’s not working out, we tend to spend more time with them in the hopes that we can turn it around. That is the majority of kind of the natural mentality that I’ve seen. I think there’s a lot to this. Probably most important, to go think about if you’re doing this today and if you are doing this today, like how do you just change it? Because spending so much effort on people who aren’t working out or customers are, aren’t working out means that you’re spending your energy on in some ways you can say negative things. And so time boxing that or being really smart about how you actually do that is a really good idea and it can help you think about exactly how you prioritize what you do. And if you don’t think about this, then you’ll just keep doing whatever you’re doing. I found that there’s very few people who actually spend time on the right things when it comes to people. [0:03:50] Steli Efti: Hey, you still there or is this dramatic pause. [0:04:08] Hiten Shah: I’m here. [0:04:09] Steli Efti: Ah, now you’re back. Now I hear you again. [0:04:12] Hiten Shah: Oh really? Where’d you lose me? [0:04:14] Steli Efti: I lost at, I think that a lot of people are not spending their time well when it comes to other people. [0:04:20] Hiten Shah: Yeah. What I was saying is yeah, okay. A lot of people are not spending their time well when it comes to other people because they end up going for the problems and attacking those. And so, one way to think about it is when you have a problem person, do you say, “Oh, we need to work with them to see how we can improve and help them improve,” Or do you say, “We need to work with them to find them a better place to be?” [0:04:53] Steli Efti: Yeah, I think that so there’s really like two things to this. I think the one is how much … When do you want to cut your losses on investing in trying to fix something internally versus empowering that somebody to be somewhere else, right? If it’s a bad fit customer instead of trying to morph and change your entire business to cater to that customer, it might just be a much better use of your time and their time to just help them recommend. Find a vendor that’s going to be the right fit for them. The same thing is true for employees. I think that, that’s a big, big component is just like what is the right amount of like investing in trying to help somebody and turn the relationship around versus when is there a point of no return where you just keep throwing good money after bad. And you should just cut your losses and you should just part ways. That will be the most productive and the most positive thing to do for both. There’s a flip side to it, which will be kind of, I think my tip, for this topic, which is to consciously … To like thoughtfully ask yourself what are some of our happiest and most successful customers and equally what are some of the most successful team members I have, and to ensure that you spent time with them, even if they’re not requiring it because there’s no fires, there’s no problems, there’s no urgent issues that they’re bringing up. And then when you spend time with them, you have to probably approach the time differently because just asking them, is everything fine? Do you need help with anything? It’s probably not going to be a good approach. They’re just more likely than not. They’re going to tell you everything is great and no, I think I’m doing really well. Right now, I don’t really have anything where I need help. If you ask people like that question and they reply to you, “Nope, everything is cool. And you go, “Well, then have a beautiful day. There’s nothing to discuss here.” I think you’re not going to get the most out of the relationship that you could. So sometimes people that are exceptionally successful, they are not used to asking for help or they’re maybe not, is used to utilizing other people because they’re so self-reliant. That’s part of why they’re so successful and why they might be doing and thriving so well in your company. But maybe those type of people. It’s not a, is there a problem I need to fix for you discussion, but it might need to be a, what is currently the most exciting stuff you’re working on? What are some projects you don’t have time for that you wish you’d have time for? What are areas that you really want to grow that you’re happy with your growth and what are areas that you kind of feel like you’re neglecting and you’d wish you’d be able to invest in more? And even if you ask somebody what are ways that I can help you if they tell you, “I don’t know.” Go, “Well, let’s think about it together. Let’s take 10 minutes and brainstorm. Let’s get creative. Let’s go wow.” You have to push them and nudge them usually a couple of times until they come up with ideas where they go, “Well shit, yeah, maybe you could help me with this thing. Now that you pushed me. Now that, we’ve been talking about this for a couple of minutes. Yeah. Now, shit you could. There is a problem where you could be useful.” These people sometimes need a lot more like nudging and a lot more help for them to even think through areas where you could help and in invest more in them and so just asking them, is everything fine? Do you have any problem? Anything I can help with? No. Okay, cool. Bye. That’s just not going to yield you real good insights on how to work with them. The same thing for happy customers. If you call a happy customer and you just go, “Hey, is everything fine? Is there anything we at company X could do to help you?” They go, “You guys have been amazing. We’re so happy. No, everything is fine.” That’s nice to hear. But those kinds of people sometimes if you nudge them a little bit and it doesn’t have to be like you for sure have to be unhappy, there’s something we fuck up. Just tell me the truth. Like it doesn’t have to be that way. It just has to be like, all right, so what is working really well? What could we do to help you there even more? What are the areas that you really like the way we work with you? Could we improve on those? Could we double down on those? What are areas that have nothing to do with us that you’re currently struggling with in your business? Right? Just spend a bit more time with people that are successful and that are valuable and where the relationship with your business and you are working and making sure that you don’t stay on the surface, but you spend more time pushing a bit digging through the surface level to truly understand because it’s very rare that there’s not a single thing you could do to help even more or to make things even better. And so just requires dedication to get to these things and an understanding that the successful and happy employees and the successful and happy customers, they’re not going to practice and give you these things because they’re not on top of their mind. [0:09:40] Hiten Shah: Yeah, it’s amazing how much energy we put into things that aren’t working. [0:09:46] Steli Efti: Mm-hmm (affirmative) [0:09:47] Hiten Shah: That’s really what it boils down to. I think that’s the conclusion of this for me. It’s amazing how much energy we put into things that are not working. We should probably put more energy into the things that are working and make sure that they continue to work. I think like the best thing I know about and I think about a lot when it comes to team members, it’s like, if you’re a flexible company and organization, you’re better off figuring out where are the best place for that person is. Whether it’s in your organization or not, when somebody has a problem. And really just figure out what those options are first, which is like in the company or not in the company. And then I help them out. Because the thing is if somebody is not having a great time in your company, you owe it to them to help them figure out what is a better place for them, where they can actually have impact. And all I mean by that is like is there a place in the company or is there not a place in the company for them? And I think, we tend to not think about it as binary or as like, it’s sort of a simple decision but it really is. [0:10:54] Steli Efti: Yeah. I love that. All right. So we’ll end this episode with your quote, and then I’ll double down on that quote, which is, it’s amazing how much time we spent with things that don’t work. I’ll say the other way around. It’s amazing how little time we spent with things that do work. [0:11:12] Hiten Shah: That’s great. [0:11:13] Steli Efti: There you go. That’s it. So our encouragement I think for everybody is spend less time with the things that don’t work and spend a lot more time with the things that are, that’s it from us for this episode. We’ll hear you very soon. [0:11:25] Hiten Shah: See ya. [0:11:25] The post 471: Startup WTFs: Not Dedicating Enough Time to Your Most Important Customers & Team Members appeared first on The Startup Chat with Steli & Hiten.