BigDeal - #1 CEO Coach: Effort Isn't What Makes You Rich, Do This Instead | Joe Hudson

Episode Date: September 21, 2026

My new book OWN OR BE OWNED is out now! I wrote Own or Be Owned to answer one question: How do you make more money, less miserably? I broke it into the 12 Profit Levers… the 12 levers I’ve seen determine whether you print cash or hate your life. Go go go: https://contrarianthinking.biz/hudson Joe Hudson is one of the most sought after CEO coaches in the world, mentoring founders from Mark Pincus to Sam Altman and turning struggling companies into billion dollar businesses. He's spent decades unlocking the hidden patterns that keep high performers stuck, and in this episode, he breaks down why work ethic is overrated, how self-reliance is secretly killing your growth, and the exact frameworks billionaire CEOs use to make great decisions without burning out. In this episode, you'll learn: Why work ethic is way overrated The golden algorithm Why shame is the lock that holds bad habits in place The “no” doctrine Why self-reliance is the biggest trap for entrepreneurs ___________ (00:00:00) Introduction: Work Ethic Is Way Overrated (00:00:56) The Golden Algorithm: What You Avoid, You Invite (00:02:18) Shame Is the Lock That Holds Bad Habits in Place (00:05:08) Every Business Problem Is a Self-Awareness Problem (00:07:39) The Action Needed Email Protocol (00:09:19) Obsession Over Work Ethic: What Actually Makes You Rich (00:11:20) Decision-Making Happens in the Emotional Center of Your Brain (00:13:40) Enjoyment Is Efficiency: The 10% More Experiment (00:14:34) Hire for What They'd Do for Free (00:15:35) Sitting Across From Billionaires: The Better Than and Worse Than Paradox (00:16:59) How to Say the Hard Thing: Every Time I Pucker, I Say It (00:24:07) Owning Your Projection: The Blame Tool (00:26:02) The No Doctrine: Stop Trying to Convince Your Team (00:29:13) Work Ethic Doesn't Correlate With Wealth (00:32:35) Money Beliefs: Why People Without Money Think It Will Solve Everything (00:34:42) Complexity Is the New Enemy: You Have to Actively Dismantle It (00:35:55) The Hardest Conversations Build the Most Trust (00:51:24) Build the Part You Understand the Least First (00:53:08) Pace and Spin: Track Wasted Energy, Not Just Output (00:53:17) Maximalism Works: Think Bigger Than You Think You Can (00:54:32) Culture Is Where Maximalists Stop Being Maximalists (00:56:31) AI Is Commoditizing Everything Except Creativity and Teamwork (00:59:14) Most Meetings Suck: If the Outcome Is More Meetings, That Meeting Sucked (01:02:23) Never Have One-on-Ones: They Create Politics (01:03:28) No Secrets: Assume Everything You Say Gets Said to Everyone (01:06:48) Where Do You Want Diversity and Where Don't You? (01:08:50) The Leader's Happiness Is the Company's Health (01:11:17) Self-Reliance Is the Ceiling: You Can't Grow Without Help ___________ MORE FROM BIGDEAL 🎥 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@podcastbigdeal 📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bigdeal.podcast 📽️ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@big.deal.pod MORE FROM CODIE SANCHEZ 🎥 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@codiesanchezct 📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/codiesanchez 📽️ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@realcodiesanchez OTHER THINGS WE DO 🌐 Our community: https://contrarianthinking.typeform.com/to/WBztXXID 📰 Free newsletter: https://contrarianthinking.biz/3XWLlZp 📚 Biz buying course: https://contrarianthinking.biz/3NhjGgN 🏠 Resibrands: https://resibrands.com/ 💰 CT Capital: https://contrarianthinking.biz/4eRyGOk 🏦 Main St Hold Co: https://contrarianthinking.biz/3YfGa8u Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Work ethic is way overrated. Wow. I know a lot of very successful people who do not do a lot of work at all. Effort is not the key. To make five or six great decisions a day, you can be incredibly successful. Today's guest is Joe Hudson, one of the most sought after coaches who mentors founders from Mark Pinkis to Sam Altman. You'll hear the actual advice to get these billionaire founders unstuck and the most difficult

truth nukes he drops on his clients that we get to steal. The best way to learn how to make great decisions is to be comfortable with all the emotional states. If I'm like, I can't feel this kind of discomfort. I can't be sad. Then I am not going to see that set of solutions. If I'm willing to feel everything, I'll make better decisions. You coach billionaire CEOs. What do you tell them that the rest of us don't get to hear? That is a fantastic question. One of the things you drill down on that I thought was really interesting, you call the golden algorithm. Can you explain what that is? So the thing that you're trying to avoid, especially in the motion you're trying to avoid, you invite,

you invite in the exact way that you're trying to avoid it. And so this is incredibly crippling for businesses, right? So if you're trying, they'll be like a conflict avoidant CEO, which you are not. Right. But like a conflict avoid CEO, they're constantly trying to avoid conflict. And therefore their firms are raging in conflict and dysfunction as an example. Fascinating, actually. So you basically become a mirror for the thing that you're trying to not have more than anything else.

Right. How can you tell somebody is not conflict avoiding that quickly? Like, how can you classify somebody that fast? That's a really hard question. So if you watch the coaching videos of me online, so if we have like a couple hundred of them, you'll see me be able to like read somebody's entire history with like a sentence or two. And there's a lot of stuff that goes into that.

But an example would be if somebody has like a line right here, it's usually repressed anger. It usually means or a critical parent hunch or if they have a tucked, by it means that they got abused a lot as a kid. So there's physical cues, there's language cues, there's emotional cues, and then there's just pattern recognition. That's horrified, by the way. It scares people.

When they watch me coach, it scares people that I, like, they feel like it's magic or something. Interesting. You have a quote that I really liked, which is shame is the lock that holds the chains of bad habits in place. Whatever you shame, you repeat. Yes. What do you mean? The easiest way to think about it.

this is to say, okay, think about all the things that you haven't wanted to do for like a decade, but you keep doing, and I can tell you something about them. All of them are things you tell yourself you should do or should not do. That's all shame. And it's very easy to see that it doesn't work because everything that you haven't changed in the last decade that you wanted to change, you've been shaming yourself for. So, like, what on earth would make us continue to do it? We're like, oh, but if I don't beat myself up, then nothing's going to change. But that's not true at all. If you look at a kid from, say, zero to seven or eight years old, there's a huge amount of change that happens. And there is no internal shame voice. We grow and evolve by our nature. We don't do it

because we're beating ourselves up. And it becomes really clear. Imagine if you had a boss. And the boss was like over your head. And it was like, you shouldn't have done it that way. Why'd you do it that way? oh, you could have done that better, the way that most people speak to themselves, you would be like, I fucking quit. I'm not here. I'm what? I'm out. But somehow we think we need to do it to ourselves, but it's really, really ineffective. So what is the way then to change something that you don't like about yourself? Focus on your wants and enjoyment. Let's say I want to work out. As soon as that want becomes a should, then it's something I have to do. It's something I'm oppressed by. It's something that, oh, crap, I didn't do it. See, I'm bad. But if every time I think

about working out, I'm like, what would be the coolest, funnest, most enjoyable way of working out? How do I enjoy working out 10% more this week? Then I'm going to more like, if at the end of my workout, I'm like, I enjoyed the hell out of that, it's probably something I'm going to do again. If it's something where I beat myself up and then I did it, I'm like, shit, I only did 40 minutes instead of 50 minutes. Why am I going to sign up to get my ass kicked again? Like, I'm not going to do that. Interesting. Right? And it does work for some people.

Don't get me wrong. But those are the people who have like a particular kind of, it's not a should. They're doing something slightly different. They're thriving off of like pushing themselves. That's a different deal. But it's, but to beat yourself up for it is the ineffective part. Yeah. My husband would be a great example of the he thrives off of the intensity.

Yeah. So if somebody's trying to coach or pep him up while working out, he's going to get out of here. Right. Beat it. Right. I'm perfectly fine. I like being miserable. in this moment, get off me. Right. And he probably, if you listen to his language, he's probably

not saying I should work out. He's like, oh, I want to work out or I'm going to go get some reps in or whatever. Yeah. His language is different. Yeah. It's important the way to talk to yourself, isn't it? Critical. You also talk a lot about not just how to do this individually, but also how to do this in business, which is cool. You often say every business problem is a self-awareness problem. Can you talk to me about that? Like, let's say you are struggling right now business. Something is failing massively. What's the first thing you should do? You should look at everything you don't want to look at. That would be the first thing that I would do. There's something in the back of your head that is that you know is tickling you that says this isn't quite right, that you're like

being positive about, or you're saying it's great, or I don't want to look at that or I don't want to open that bill, whatever it is, you go right there and that's where your inefficiency is. That's where you look. And that's the same thing with self-awareness. If somebody comes to me and said, how do I start working on self-awareness? One of the first things I'm going to tell them is look at all the places you don't want to look. Like, that's where you're going to start finding yourself. You can look at it as there's that thing I don't want to look at.

That's a pain in the ass. Or you can say, oh, that's where the inefficiency is. Therefore, that's where I have the opportunity to make the most money or grow the most. And so it's the same. In the business, the thing you don't want to look at is where you're going to have the most opportunity. Internally, it's the same thing. where when you look at that and resolve that, then you get the biggest unlock. Yeah.

This guy Brad Jacobs, I really like, who wrote how to make a few billion dollars. He has this quote that I love, which is, why would you get upset when you see problems in business? That's where all the money is. Yeah, exactly. And so that's actually been really helpful to me. Every time I have a big problem in business, I'm like, all right, let's deal with that. It's annoying, maybe in this instance. But, man, the second and third order effects of this, probably all the money is right there.

Yeah. And the other thing that, this is more for like the people who are running big businesses, but the thing that I noticed there is when they have a problem, that's the first order. The second order is how do I solve this problem structurally? So I never have to face it again, ever. And that is like, that's a huge unlock. A hundred. It's so funny.

We just, well, I was rudely late to this podcast. And it was because I was dealing with this thing that I sort of had to deal with in the moment. And that was where we left it. I was like, okay, issue. problem, big, annoying. But second thing, I think these are the three steps we take so we don't have to deal with it again. I don't have the answers to like how to fix this perfectly, but fucking if we're not doing these things next, we're idiots. Yeah, I think that business people are, successful business people are pretty good at doing that with like the business phenomenon. They often aren't great at it

on the human phenomenon. So I'll give you an example. I was reading emails inside of our company And I just was annoyed because it was, I think this, well, maybe we should do this. I think, you know, one of those emails. And there was like no movement and there was a whole bunch of people. It just, ugh. So we have a structural solution. At the end of every one of our emails, you have to write, no matter who you are, action needed. You have to name a person, anybody in the company, give them an action and a date in which it needs to be done.

So I have people at the bottom of our organization delegating to me, and everybody delegates to each other. And it happens at the end of every email. And you're not writing an email if you don't have that. Email reduction of 30%, productivity increased by like 35, 40%. Interesting. So one little action like that. And that's what I mean.

Because you can think about it through, like, how do we prevent this kind of risk in the future? but you can all think about it as culturally, how do we change the culture so that this victim culture is never happening again or whatever it is. Yeah, it's super interesting because you were here in Austin, Texas, now one of the tech really centers of the world. Yeah. And I happen to know a bunch of these guys who probably you work with. Now I can't wait to go ask them afterwards and say, you didn't tell me anything but which of you fuckers works with him because I know some of you do or need to.

And it's funny because you teach emotional intelligence to some of these leaders. What have you found are the key characteristics that most people have to have in order to succeed? Obsession, without a doubt. Like an obsession on the problem. I think something higher order than money, the meaning if your game is just to make the money, you're not going to be as successful as if your game is to be the best or to have a massive impact on the world through creating a technology,

or by helping a lot of people, or by being the company that makes the best decisions, whatever it is. But you have to have a goal that's beyond the goal of making money. That's another really important thing that is there. I think work ethic is way overrated, I would say. I know a lot of very successful people who do not do a lot of work at all.

So if you, at some level, you have to be able to make great decisions more than anything else. So if you make five or six great decisions a day, you can be incredibly successful. And the way I think about this is, I don't know any startup that has failed because of lack of effort, right? Like in Silicon Valley, I'm sure that there's like restaurants or whatever, but Silicon Valley, There is no place where they didn't work themselves in the ground to be successful. So effort is not the key. The key is like, oh, am I, is the leverage there?

Am I making great decisions? Interesting. And so I think that that's something that they need to be able to do pretty consistently is make really good decisions in the key and understand the leverage points of those decisions. So like a great investor, for instance, they might be a horrible board member and be okay. They might have like low EQ and be okay, but they have to be able to identify great entrepreneurs if they're venture capitalists investor. They have to be able to identify. They can do just that one thing really, really well. They can be incredibly successful. How do you get better at

making good decisions? So making good decisions is a really interesting thing. Neurologically speaking, if I took the emotional center of your brain out, you would cease to make decisions. It would literally take you half an hour to two or three hours to decide where to have lunch. So we make decisions in the emotional center of our brain. We do not make logical decisions, neurologically speaking. And so occasionally there's a bypass. You can like jump away from a snake without going through the emotional center of your brain, but then it's not also not going to the prefrontal cortex. So that's what we're doing. So then the question is, if we're making emotional decisions, how do we make the best emotional decisions? And this is where the rubber.

hits the road with emotional fluidity is that if I'm willing to feel everything, I'll make better decisions than if I'm not willing to feel certain things. If I'm like, I can't feel this kind of discomfort. I can't be sad. I can't feel failure. If I don't want to feel that stuff, then I am not going to see that set of solutions that might have that as a risk. And I'm not going to take those actions. And you can just see your whole life is parsed by by that kind of decision making. Everybody's life is parsed by that kind of decision making, depending on what it is you want to feel. That's important to that. Exactly. There's some science that shows that there's happiness and relevance. I think they use the word meaning. And it's basically everybody's wired in

one of those two ways. I either want the, I'll give up the short-term happiness for the meaning, or I'll have the happiness, but I'll give up the meaning. Like they're prioritized in one way or I find that like the more you get of one, the more you get at the other. So I'm a both-and kind of human on this. Are people who try to be happier as opposed to have more meaning, more or less successful? Is there any correlation? Absolutely. I think the people who go for a purpose or meaning definitely have a higher chance of success because they'll lean into the difficult moment more likely, which is the big driver for success. Whether that's working out, I'm going to feel the pain or doing business, I'm going to go have that hard conversation.

It's going to drive more success. However, I think that when folks who are driven by meaning start to understand the efficiency of enjoyment, then all of a sudden they become a lot more successful. So what that means is if I had a really fast car, you would know it's not an efficient car. Right? But business, people often think fast is efficient. but fast isn't efficient. Efficient is how much energy do we use to get to the place.

And so if you're, and I highly recommend doing this experiment, take a week and say, how do I enjoy my week 10% more? And if you're successful at enjoying your week 10% more, I will guarantee you that you were more productive, you have more energy, and your week after that's going to be a better week as well. And so the idea that enjoyment is something that we should optimize for when high performers get that, when they actually like experience how much like more, more effective they are with that, it totally changes everything. So when I'm hiring people,

I think about what does this person, what would this person do if I didn't pay them? And if that's not what I'm hiring them for, I don't hire them. That's very, very true. Because you have to have a love of the game. I was just realizing this with an executive that we have, who really, I think, at their highest point likes to golf and like be social. We hired them for a rule that was not that.

And I remember one of my executives saying to me when we did it, this will be good for about a year, but it's not going to be longer than that. So if this is this gap that we want to fill for this period and there's a specific role there, then okay.

But in retrospect, I'm not sure that's ever a good idea. And so it's really, yeah, it's really interesting. Because it hurts the culture. Yeah, it does. Yeah, you have to sometimes. You know, it is business, so there's these moments. But generally, I don't make that sacrifice.

Yeah. You sit down with one of the leaders of the free world in many ways and some of the biggest builders of our time. Yeah. One of them being Sam Altman, what is that like? With super high performers, one of the things that you'll get a lot of where you don't get it as much in the normal population, but you do get in the normal population is on one hand, they are, they think they're better than everybody and on another level they think they're worse than everybody. It's like both they're like trying to prove that they're not bad and something in them says hey I'm better and it allows them to

right. And so that resolution resolving that that's a lot of pain. And resolving that is is something that's pretty consistent in that arena. Like you know maybe 70% consistent in that arena to if you really want to do a major unlock. But you know there's that. There's also like, self-reliance. Self-reliance is a huge thing for, for entrepreneurs and business leaders, and you can unlock a lot there. But generally, it's, you know, we all have our shame. We all have our love. We all have our obsessions. We all have our care. We all have our, you know, self-abuse. Like, it's, you know, there's, it's, it's the same, we're all humans. There's no real difference. And yeah. So say you're sitting down to, to chat,

with someone. And like, if you want someone to really change their perspective, to have a life change, to flip a mentality that's holding them back, is there a unique way you start these conversations? So I never have that agenda for anybody. So I follow their agenda. So when I sit across from somebody, their wisdom is what I follow. I don't follow my wisdom. Because no matter how smart I am, I don't know the next move for them that they want to do. And if I try to inspire them to do something, and you see a lot of people like big inspirational, you should do this, it's great. And everybody walks out going, that's fantastic. And then a week later, their life hasn't changed. That's just not an effective way of transforming as compared to somebody saying, this is fucking

bothering me. Great. Let's go there. So the first thing I look for is what's the thing that's actually bothering them, what's the problem that they're having. That's where we're going to find their passion to resolve it and enough pain for them to actually want to do something about it. And that's where we're going to start always. And then the second step typically is to, is there's an emotional and an intellectual piece. The intellectual piece is to help them realize that everything they'd been doing is not working. Because if it was working, they wouldn't be coming to me with it. And so it's to deconstruct the intellectual piece that's holding them back. And then there's the emotional piece. There's something in there

that they typically don't want to feel. And there's some pattern that they're repeating in their life over and over and over again. And that's usually underpinned by a stagnant emotion. So if, let's say, you have a girlfriend who has dated the same guy over and over and over again. He has a different license plate and a different name and a different, you know, face, but it's the same guy over and over and over again. And if I went to that girlfriend's family of origin, I can guarantee you I would find the remnants of all these boyfriends in the parents, right? And so what's happening there is they had a traumatic is one word for it, but they had an experience where an emotion didn't get resolved. I didn't get loved. I didn't get seen. I didn't get, I got abandoned, I got abused. And now

I'm going to relive that pattern over and over and over again. As soon as they feel the thing that they couldn't feel as a kid, like the hurt of it or the anger behind it or the fear behind it. And they can fall in love with that when they can say, oh, I can't wait to feel abandoned again, which is a weird thing. Then that pattern of dating the same person will go away. Yeah, because they're just trying to, it's like a cell trying to get homeostasis. And it's like, okay, here's this thing that I haven't been able to resolve. So I keep on repeating the pattern until I can resolve it.

Is there a process that you go through to try to get people to resolve those big, dark, scary things? Again, I don't ever try to get anybody to any place. So the first step is really just let them talk because they'll eventually tell you what they're struggling with. I just asked them to tell me in the first sentence. I don't want to fuck around. Sentence one, what are you struggling? Yeah, what's the issue? They say it.

And the way they tell it to me probably tells me where the unlock is. If you watch the coaching videos, you'll see that in the first three or four sentences, they've told me everything I need to know to lead them to the unlock, but they have to do the unlocking. Interesting. When you're a CEO, you have zero time to waste. Like, that's what Joe and I were talking about. And that is the same spirit that drives busy. Most business formation services, they're built to finish a task, sometimes not that quickly,

sometimes not that efficiently. they just file an LLC, send the confirmation they disappear. But Busy, I love because they're built to stay. So they help you start the process. Then they continue handling the filings, the deadlines, and the state requirements that keep showing up long after the first year. So you don't have to because you don't have time. So when you form a business with Busy, it's fast, it's simple. Formation starts at $0 plus state fees. So you can join the over 1 million entrepreneurs that have used Busy to do the work behind the work. And if you want to do that, I have a special code for you. you go to busy.com slash Cody to get started. I got you. So then base, you ask the question, they tell you, then you follow the thread to, in almost all these instances, some emotional moment that they need resolved. Yeah. So there's either a lot of open-ended questions so that they can see. The other thing that I do is I love experiments. And so in our courses, all of our courses, there's no talking very little. There's just experiments. And so, If you can give somebody an experiment that they can do in the moment that shows them the thing in the moment,

then that can resolve something for them, like, instantaneously. What's your favorite experiment? A great experiment would be this, would be, how do you enjoy yourself 10% more right now? Without changing what you're doing, just you don't get to, like, get up and stop having the interview. But like, right now, what's required for you to enjoy yourself? A better chair. I want better chairs. No, without changing the chair without anything.

You can't change anything. You can't change anything. Except for your internal state. I'm happy. Internal state. Oh, so I have to self. What's required? Okay, well, I guess I sat up more straight.

Now I feel a little bit better. I'm pregnant, so everything hurts all the time right now. It's fine. It's about it supposed to be. Probably that's it. Laughing? Like, I could just laugh at something. That's not nice?

Yeah. Are these, is that what you mean? There's no, yeah, it's just what is required to make this. 10% more enjoyable. But it can't because I want to buy something else to fix it. Right. Yeah. Okay, fine. Exactly. Exactly. And so then the question is, if that's true, if it's possible for you right now to make this 10% more enjoyable by being more present or by sitting up more straight or by taking a deep breath or relaxing into the moment, whatever it be, what makes it that your whole life can't be 10% more enjoyable without changing anything?

You know what I think is funny sometimes about advice or feedback about emotions is that all of us innately go, well, I'm pretty good, but if you could talk to my partner. So I'm sure you get this all the time. It's fine. I think I'm okay, but if you could talk to my husband, my wife, my, you know, whatever, whatever. So you do deal with these, like I imagine, sometimes stubborn, serious opinionated people. Yeah. Like what are your mechanisms for breaking through someone or breaking through to someone who is really stubborn and maybe doesn't want to do this kind of work. But if they don't want to do this work, I don't do the work with them, period.

Yeah. I don't want to do it. It's like, it's like, why would I work with somebody that I can't have a huge impact with? Like, I have a choice of people I work with. I'm going to work where I get leverage, right? So there's that aspect of it. As far as tools go, that particular tool, the blame tool, like, the, the,

one I use is is owning a projection. So typically what you can show somebody is that the thing that they're blaming somebody else for, they're also doing. It's almost always the case. When I say almost always, I don't think I've ever not come across it. So it's like, oh, I'm blaming my wife for like not paying attention to me. Oh, cool. So let's talk about all the ways that you're not paying attention to your wife or that you're not paying attention to yourself. And let's see if the problem is actually with your wife or with you or both. And that immediately opens up the empathy response because they can see that they're also in it, both for themselves and for the other, which is usually a lot of the resolution to blame is empathy. So that's one solution to the problem. The other

solution to the problem is that usually when anybody's blaming another person, it's very easy, very easy to intellectually disintegrate that thing. It's like, okay, so, you don't blame anybody else for your failed, your failed investment, let's say, right? Like, you're like, somehow there's world forces, there's political forces, there's geopolitical forces, there's geopolitical forces, but you're responsible for that. But somehow or another, the remodel of your mansion, your wife's responsible for. You're not taking any responsibility for that, right? You can deconstruct the blame really, really easily.

Interesting. Intellectually. Because it's interesting, I think. you get an adult or into business, you see the same thing. Like, some of the biggest difficulties I have are like, huh, I see X. My executive or a counterparty or whoever sees Y. Yes. And no matter what, I'm trying to get my frame across, but I can't. And so there's either my projection isn't working or I'm not, you know, taking something back. What do you do when you're trying to get somebody to see your perspective? Yeah, that's a great one. So, especially in

I think this is a massive tool and it's a great unlock. So I don't ever try to walk into a room and convince my team or any team to do stuff because it's super ineffective. So I do it the same way that you would sell, which is basically I want to hear all your objections and we're going to handle the objections. And every one of your objections, I'm going to mine for a better solution. Right. So I call this the no doctrine. So you walk into your team and you're like, here's my idea. please tell me everything that's broken about it. First of all, they listen a lot better when they don't feel you're trying to convince them

and they think that you're asking them for help. Great. And then they tell you what's not going to work. Now, maybe they're right. Maybe it'll change the answer 0.001%. Maybe it'll change the answer 99%. But we're going to have a dialogue over that. And by the time that's finished,

we're all going to be aligned. So if I go and try to convince somebody, typically what happens, or if I see my CEOs do this, they could try and go and convince people and everybody nods and says, yep, you got it. And then the action doesn't happen. Yeah, it's really interesting. We say here that like first layer is communication. Have you communicated what you want? And then the second layer is understanding. Do they actually understand what you want? And then the third layer is, do they agree with what you say that you want?

And then the fourth layer is, is there incentive alignment? Like, even if they agree and they understand and you communicated clearly, are they incentivized, you know, in whatever. whatever is important to them to do the thing. Right. And if you don't have all four, things don't happen. It's a great way to break it down because the no doctrine, all four happen by nature. Yeah. By the nature.

And it's, again, it's that opposite thing. It's not, I'm trying to convince you to get somewhere. It is, I actually want to tell you why we're not going to be successful doing this. Interesting. Yeah. Yeah, that's super useful. I love one of the things you mentioned earlier, which was work ethic. Yeah.

And I am increasingly, it's actually the subject of my new book. been obsessed with it because, like I told you, I'm pregnant. And so I just have less time in the day. I'm less efficient than I used to be. Even if I just want to be really honest, I'm more tired, I'm slower, I'm all these things. Yeah, and soon you have milk brain. Oh my God. I can't even imagine because now I have pregnancy brain. I mean, I saw you in the hallway and I was like, I'm not positive, but I'm pretty pot, but I'm not going to say anything because I want to check. So, so anyway, you know, I'm sort of having to realize some human things about me. And this idea of work ethic is really interesting because I've always thought that you don't have to be miserable

to build a really big business. Yeah. That you might have moments of extreme misery. Yeah. But writ large, a lot of the most successful people out there, I mean, Jeff Bezos talks about putting around and having a coffee in the morning. You know, Tim Cook talks about doing a workout every morning for an hour, not responding to anything. Yeah. And then you hear a lot of the hustle guys on the internet that are like, you wake up at 5 a.m., you suck, you don't have a Lambo. Like, you should just keep going. And so I guess I want to know what if you, you actually work with the biggest billionaires in the world.

Yeah, yeah. Like, what do you see as far as their work habits and work ethic? The entire spectrum. I have 24-7 guys, and I have people who literally, I think, maybe work effectively two or three hours a week, maybe. Yeah. So really no correlation between the harder work, the harder you work, the more money, maybe.

I think that there is a correlation. meaning, like, I think the people who are obsessed with something are more likely to succeed and obsessed people usually work harder. Like, I think there is a correlation there, but I think it's the obsession that's important, not the work, not the ethic. Yeah. Like, meaning, and especially the kind of fuel that they use is another big thing, right? Like, if you're, if you're working hard because you're, I work hard, because I am, I would do everything I do for free that I do for money. I don't do anything for money that I wouldn't do for free. And I don't have to work.

Like I could be done 10 times over, right? And so I love what I do. And so I work hard. But I come from a place of passion and mission. If I'm coming from a place of trying to prove myself, trying to prove myself to dad, trying to look good for the neighbors, trying to be like number,

like have the Lambo, blah, blah, blah. That does not last. That like, you better figure out a way to get rich quickly and sell quickly and get out. because it doesn't last a long time. You burn out, you know, and those people, what typically happens, you see this, they sell their company, they stay in their pajamas for one or two years, and then they beat themselves up for not doing another project, but they have enough money that they never need to.

Yeah. Like that's what you see, and it's not a happy life. It's not a happy ending. No. Right. And I'm sure you've seen this. Yeah, definitely. times. But I do think, you know, I've become, let's say internet friends. I wouldn't say close friends yet,

but I respect him a lot with Tony Robbins. Yeah. The last time I was talking to him, you know, I'm like, come on, where are you breaking your word? Like, you know, you talk about the most important thing is the word. There's got to be somewhere. Yeah. You know, you like had to think about it for a second. He's like, I'm honestly pretty good at it right now. He's like, but I guess the one place would be, um, I keep saying I'm going to slow down. Yeah. And, and, you like, and, and, you're just, And I don't slow down. And, you know, he, like, didn't have a voice. So he was like, I was here and I was here.

And I, you know, told my wife that I'd slow down and da-da-da. And I haven't been able to. And I think that's because he doesn't see it as work. Right. He's just obsess. Yeah. You know, and when he is a very different persona than you do, but when he locks in on you, you're like, well, I can tell you're really into this because this is, like,

you're here. You're nowhere else. Yeah, yeah, that's right. And so that's interesting. What have you noticed from really, really rich people? Like, do they have different beliefs about money and success than you? you find with normal people? Yeah. So people who don't have money and want money, they typically have some belief system hidden in there that money is evil or bad, maybe because their dad shows money

over them, or maybe because their dad was, or mom was oppressed by money or rich people are bad or something. There's some aspect that's going there. They also have a hard time being grateful for the financial abundance that they do have. And I find people with a lot of money actually are pretty good, typically, not always, but typically pretty good at being like, I recognize that I'm blessed here or lucky or whatever the word they're going to use is. That's one thing. The other thing is that very, very wealthy people, money is not the objective. And so money is a way to win a different game that they're playing. And so that's a different thing, I think, that's there. Wealthy people also realize that money's not going to solve problems. There's some problems they can solve,

but it can create as many, if not more, problems. And whereas people without the money often think that once I get money, then all my problems are going to be solved, which is one of the reasons that keeps money away from them, because nobody actually wants all their problems solved. Oh, interesting. Like, nobody's like, okay, I'm going to press this button and you're going to be an absolute total piece for the rest of your life. money? That is a little scary. What are you going to do? Float around on this lotus flower or something? Yeah. Interesting. No, we're human. We want the ups and downs. We want the drama. So, so there's a whole

bunch of things. There's a lot of things hooked into money. I'm going to get free. I'm going to be happy. I'm going to be a piece. I'm not going to have to worry. And people with money, they don't, they can't buy into that very much. And I think one of the most brilliant things I ever heard was there there's this young up-and-comer with this incredibly wealthy guy and they're sitting talking with me and the up-and-comer was like, yeah, I just look forward to like the day that I don't have to work. And the guy said, there's no day. You all, everybody works. Everybody works.

And this guy had plenty of money, but like just managing his money was work. Like just the house that, like it's all work. Yeah. Isn't that the truth? Also, I don't think you realize until you have more. more of it, how much, like, complexity gets added to your life with success. Yeah. So, you know, like, the simplest your life will be is probably however it is at this moment.

It'll never get simpler. And so all you're going to have is added complexity at some point. And complexity typically is some sort of problem. I think that complexity is, it's like bureaucracy in a company. You have to actively dismantle it. It does not dismantle itself. Yeah. But you can't.

You have to fight against it, you know? A lot of these people, I mean, I always loved that, that George Clooney movie where he talks about only having the backpack and every single thing you put in it is an additional weight you have to carry. Now, he probably took that to the extreme one way. But if you think about it in life, you know, so many of these people who become massively wealthy, they have 42 houses. I mean, Peter Thiel's got a ship of mattress to all of his locations. Every time he goes that the master's isn't there. He's upset about the mattress. So, you know, you're like, huh, that's a lot to carry. Also, a lot of those people are so smart that they love having a complex game.

Yeah, that's true. Right. Like, if chess is boring for you, it's really. nice to play multinational, like, six-dimensional chess. And that a lot of them are literally just building a problem complex enough for them to be interested in. Yeah, that's a good point. This is international mattress delivery. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. What about, you have to sit across from billionaires. I don't have to do shit. Okay, that's true. You get to sit across from billionaires or people who do really interesting things. Yeah. Like, have you ever had to have a really hard conversation with If I don't have a hard conversation in every coaching session, I am not doing my job. Interesting.

So what's the hardest thing you've ever had to express to somebody or what's a story that someone could relate to from those hard? Okay, I'm sitting with an exact, I'll give you two stories. I'm sitting with an executive team. And one of the exercises that we'll do inside of an executive team is we'll teach people how to be triggered by each other. So we'll literally have people trigger each other and figure out how to resolve triggering conversation so that they can have hard conversations easily.

So everybody's like having a hard time triggering the CEO because the CEO had a had a pension for getting angry. And so, so everyone's like, well, you do it, Joe. I was like, okay. So I sat down. I was like, your anxiety and fear is going to destroy this company and everybody in this room knows it in front of the entire executive team. But that's like, that's Tuesday for me.

The other, the other, the other. What does he say? He looked at me. He's like, yeah, yeah, you're right. Because if you're able to, like, pinpoint the really dark deep truth. It's not just the pinpointing is I had no judgment. Yeah. I could see him.

I could love him as he was. I wasn't judging him. I wasn't, like, bought up in the fact that I needed to change him. Interesting. Yeah. The other great story was I was brought into this. It was like a, you know, whatever. It was like a, like, $10 billion market cap company.

The CEO calls me in. and he introduces me for about five minutes. I saw on your wall this great less words, more meaning. Oh, we aspire. Yeah. And so it introduces me and everybody's kind of checked out, half checked out, kind of listening. And so I said, okay, thanks for the introduction.

I'm going to go around the table. I'm going to ask why each of you was not listening to the CEO. And then I'm going to ask the CEO why you continued to speak when nobody was listening to you. And everybody cringes. Everybody crudges. But that's my job. And what it takes sometimes. It's just the efficient approach.

You know, there's other ways to do it. But in business, like most people are, have time poverty. Right? Yeah. And it's complete, it's nonsense. Their time poverty is nonsense, but they have it. And so you have to work within that constraint. So you need to show that there's going to be a lot of value very quickly if they're going

to continue to invest in you. And plus, I don't want to work with people who can't handle it. Yeah, that's no fun. No interest. No. How do you get comfortable with saying really difficult things to people? Well, one is, you know, there was a while in my career where it just basically it became every, I called it, every time I pucker, I say it. Like if I think, oh my gosh, I could never, and then I do. And very quickly after that, I learned that the more fear I had in saying it, the more it would come out sideways. So the important thing was to say it with just a gigantic, big open heart, right? And I remembered two things that happened in my life.

When I was doing this experiment, I remember two things that happened in my life. The first one was I was like 13 years old. Because of the alcoholic father and everything, I was super dysfunctional youth, had a green mohawk. I lied a lot. And I had a friend just basically come up to me and said, like, hey, we all know you lie. And we'd all like you more if you didn't. And I stopped lying. I just like, stop lying because of that act of compassion.

And so in that story helped me recognize that it's compassion what I'm doing. Like that act in that room is an act of compassion. They're all fucking miserable if that's what's going on. Nobody calling that out is just like letting something fester. It's like it's like looking at a big boil and not doing anything about it. It's horrible. So that's one thing. that that kind of gets me over the hump on a personal level. And then the other thing was a friend of mine was hanging out with me at some point. And I was like in 36 or 7 or something. He's like, Joe, you're a dick.

I was like, no one, but it got defensive. He's like, don't be defensive. I don't have a problem that you're a dick. Like, yeah, just embrace that you're a dick. For Christ's sakes, like, you're a dick. Who cares? Like, let's just, like, let's enjoy you being a dick. That was his approach with me.

And I finally gave up the ghost. I was like, okay, yeah, yeah, I guess I can see how I'm a dick. Like, I could see the way. And what I notice is in the acceptance of that, it dwindled. Like, it allowed me to, like, not defend it and not defending it, reduce the shame, reducing the shame meant that I didn't repeat it over and over again. And all of a sudden, I was less of a dick by accepting that I was. in fact, being a dick. And that just, like, it opened my heart and I realized, oh. And so now when I say

those complicated things, difficult things, hard things, one, I'm paid to do it. So it's like there's an excuse. So I don't want to say, but I'll do it in personal life just as quickly. But the second is I I've seen so many times where it's helped so many people, it's worth it. It's like I've seen life's transformed because of a well-placed sentence. I've seen careers change because of a well-placed And so, like, why would I hold that back from people? And yes, there's some people who get offended. It does happen. But it happens really rarely in my world now, personal or otherwise.

Yeah. I'm literally, like, with a friend, I'm literally with a friend walking this morning. And they were giving me, like, those ruck things that you're supposed to, like, increase bone density. Felt, like, such a meme. It was awesome. And we're, like, walking along, we're having this conversation. And then, like, just out of the blue, I looked at both of the blue. I looked at both of them. I was like, yeah, so the passive-aggressive anger between the two of you,

what's up? Like, that's, that's hanging out with me. That is what it's like. That's what it's like. And do you ever get it really wrong where they're like, what the fuck you're talking about? Well, those are two different things. Okay. I get the, what the fuck are you talking about and I'm dead right. And then I, but I never argue. So somebody's like, no, you've got it all wrong. I'm like, okay. What am I missing? And then you just listen. And then I just listen because it's, again, it's not my wisdom. It's their wisdom.

So whatever's available to them is the thing you work with. It's not what's available to you. It's really useful, actually, because I think in a lot of my arguments or life, if I think about it, it is this like control dynamic trying to get other people to see my perspective, be heard, a fear of like, well, what if I just let them have their truth? Then mind becomes less relevant. And I know this is common for a lot of people. Really common.

But it seems like you've kind of let a lot of that go. You're like, okay, I can have whatever frame I want and still listen to yours. Like, what is the key to allowing somebody else to have their own truth and not letting it scare you that you can't have yours? Yeah, that's a great, great question. So this is particularly important, I think, for self-reliant people. People who are self-reliant typically had a childhood where they learned that they weren't going to be taken care of. and 90% of the time, they also had a childhood where they learned that they had to take care of somebody else. right and in that is one of there's many things there's things like they have a hard time asking for help

they have a hard time saying what they want they have a hard time saying when they're hurt they have a problem with authority they don't want to be the full authority but they don't want to have an authority over them like there's a whole bunch of things that come with self-reliance but one of the things that comes with self-reliance is that there is a deep craving to be seen and cared for and when you recognize that that drive to like see it my way is just that underneath drive of being seen and cared for then you can start saying well is that the best way to be seen and cared for and you find out it isn't and that's what I've learned

and it's a particularly like a self-reliant thing that people have that kind of push in them and when that unlocks their business takes off because all of a sudden, instead of an owner-run business, it's everybody owns the business. Because as long as they're trying to push their thing, it's they're the owner instead of everybody being the owner. And it's a huge shift inside of a business when that, when that pivots. There is some things that a business owner can't let go of too, right?

Like, you do need to hold your power. You have to own that. And you could have a whole podcast on that. But I would never let go of like, this is our. operating principles. I would never let go of like this is the way that we do business or this is the brand because like the the leader's job is to own the playing field, but it's to create a game where everybody gets to play for themselves, you know, and as a team like both. They like they get that but I will never let go of that. That's the place where I'm asserting control is,

I find very useful and very, very productive. So it's like, Uber, there's like five rules to Uber, right? You get paid more if you work more, you get, you know, you get paid more if you're at a certain location, you have to get five-star ratings and you can't cheat your customer, something like that, right? And they have this huge decentralized thing where everybody works and is productive and they don't have to manage anybody. That's the part you have to own. But if you get that part right, then the business just because everybody gets to, it's like a decentralized approach to your own business. And you can see this happen in Berkshire Hathaway, the Constitution of United States, 12-step programs, iTunes.

Yeah. It really works and it works inside of a company, but you can't do it if you're looking to be seen. Can I just tell you this? I spent 15 years in finance learning how winners actually win. And you know what the takeaway is? Most people work way too fucking hard for the money they take home. You know, I've built nine-figure businesses and worked with thousands of companies and realized the same dumb mistakes get made over and over by Me Too at first. So I actually wrote a new book called Owner Beyond that answers the question, how do you make more money less miserably? I've broken it down into 12 profit levers, the 12 levers I've seen determined whether you print cash or hate your life. On September 18th, I'm doing something insane, teaching the whole system line and giving away a million dollars in cash

and prizes. So scan this QR code or hit the link below. I'll send you your free invite. I'm super excited about this. We've never done anything like it. And if you want to steal my 10,000 hours and a lot of the lessons that Joe talked about, you're going to want to be there. One shot. Never doing this again. I always liked the quote that I mess up who says it every time, which is if you want to teach, if you want to teach your people to build a boat, don't teach them about ropes and nails and hammers, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea. And I think there's like a portion of that, which is like how do we get? them to want to be a part of this, to feel a piece of ownership as opposed to the TPS report

is due on Thursday. They all want to. Like, nobody came into this office today and said, I hope Cody's unhappy with me today. Everybody came into the office today thinking, oh, I hope Cody sees that I'm doing something. I hope they're seeing. Everybody here is motivated to make your world easier. Most self-reliant people can't see that. So they're all bought in on that. So it's like it's already set up for that level of success. And so you actually have to actively stop that from occurring. That is true. You know, it's funny.

That is one, we have a member of our team and she's lovely and a stud. But she would always say at the end of doing something, she would always say, happy. It was a question to me. Yeah. And I finally had to say, can you explain to me why you keep asking me that question? Yeah. And she was like, well, I just want to make sure you're happy with everything that's happening.

I'm like, why do you think that me being happy with us is the outcome? that we want. Do you think that that's good or bad? I'm like, this isn't a sneaky question either. I'm like, this is a real question. I'm very curious. And she was like, well, I think I just say it, because I do want to make sure you're happy. I'm like, okay, well, like, from my perspective, what I actually want is like, have we accomplished what we need to get done? Like, did we do the job? What does do the job mean? Like, we have a goal. We do the things we think we need to do to hit the goal. Whether we hit the goal or not always in our control, but like we've done the things to hit the goal and in every single situation.

And me being happy or not, probably should not be the defining characteristic of this. But to your point, I think as you become a leader, you have to start getting comfortable, actually dissecting words, which can feel small in some ways. And recognize that that's the thing is people do want you to be happy because it's what makes them feel safe.

And so you're not actually providing the leadership. But so I'll take that one step for it. I don't really even care, My biggest thing now is have you done enough iterations? I don't really even care. Like, did we do everything to get the goal? How many experiments have you tried is my big thing now? Yeah, that's a very good point, especially in the age of AI.

Especially. Because it's so easy to one-shot things or two-shot things. And that is done, but it's not. Every single person in our company has one of their goals is to do at least five experiments a quarter on their job. Yeah, I like that. It's so productive. It's unbelievable.

And everybody stays interested. And you retain smart people. Yeah. Because bored people, smart people don't stay if they're bored. It's a good question. Like, if you think about it this way, to overly simplify, what do you think makes the difference between a good leader and a bad leader? Oh, there's so many.

Okay. So what I would say is that if a culture has, doesn't have the hard conversations, you have a bad leader, but it could be for many reasons. And if they don't resolve those hard conversations quickly, have hard conversations and resolve them quickly are kind of the two things that you're looking for. If you have a yeller, you're not going to have the hard conversations are not going to resolve quickly. If you have a conflict avoidant person, you're not going to have a hard conversation. You're not going to overcome it quickly. So there's lots of ways of being a bad leader. But if you're looking for the two metrics to determine if you're a good leader, it's

Are the hard conversations happening? Are they happening quickly and are they going to resolve quickly? If that's happening, you're a good leader. And that's what actually builds trust. So you can't get a team of trust because everybody's nice to each other. That's like, that's what Google tried. It does not work. Like you need to have hard conversations that resolve into something better.

And that's what actually builds trust. And I believe your husband was Navy SEAL. I guarantee they had hard conversations that resolve quickly. and there's a huge amount of trust inside of his team. Very much so. Right. And that's just how it works. If people go through the shit together and they come out better on the other side of it,

trust is built in a way that it can only be built that way. You have a saying, build the part you understand the least first. Yeah. What does that mean and why? So this is actually pulled from MIT Media Lab. So if you're going to build a car and you know how to build every part of a car except the catalytic converter, most people will build every part of the car, then built the catalytic converter,

realize it doesn't fit and have to rebuild at least half of the car to get the catalate converter in. So for me, it's, what's the thing I understand least? I'm going to build that first. And then the next question is,

what's the simplest experiment I can run that will teach me the most about the thing I don't understand? Right? So if I don't understand a funnel, what's the thing I don't understand about the funnel? What's the quickest experiment

that I can quickly run that I'll learn the most about? And then everything just becomes a series of experiments. I never really try to get to this successful funnel. I just run as many experiments as I can as quickly as I can to get to. It's a great point. Because we say a lot here, like, the more, the faster you move, the more money you make. But I don't exactly mean that. It's a cute sentence. What I really mean is, like, the faster you can have feedback iterative loops that tell you something real. And then you act on each one of those loops, the more you'll get to

whatever the right direction is more quickly. Right. So it's, it's the faster you move with, real reflection with forward motion, right? And so that's what we care about is like, is there, is there, we, every week in our company, there's a, and now it's every two weeks, everybody reports, this is my pace and this is my spin. Spin is wasted energy. If you look at your calendar, how much of it actually was useful. And that's what we track. And just bringing that into consciousness is the difference between moving fast and moving effectively and efficiently. What have you learned from working with these huge power players? So much stuff.

I bet. Like, what are the coolest lessons that you're like, I can't believe you paid me to learn that? The recent one is just how well maximalism works. Is that mean? Oh, my God. There's so many people who are maximalists in Silicon Valley who are basically, okay, so I have one client who was bought by another client.

Wow. And so he has a month of all this stuff until the acquisition and then he starts working. So between that month and like two weeks in, he has orchestrated three other purchases of the mother company of companies that he's always wanted to buy. He's a maximalist. Right. The company that he works for is a maximalist company. like, no, we're going to do this and this and this and this. And we can also do this and this. Like that thinking is amazing to be around and and to see how useful it is. And focus is

incredibly useful too. And it's you have to be able to do both of those two things. But typically I'm just learning how you can think bigger. And it almost always pays off. And it's like how much the constraint is actually in the mind. What's interesting to me is that a lot of the people who are maximalists in business aren't maximalists in culture, meaning, oh, I understand that I could do more and better in business always. There's always more revenue to make. There's always more companies to buy. There's always more technology to create. My culture is pretty good. It could always be better. You could have like the best culture in the world. And you know that pays off in your business. what makes you go, that's enough, which is interesting.

And I've always been a maximalist when it comes to culture. Like, oh, we can do, we can make a culture that's just unfrikin believable. But the maximalists in the like the material world has been, has been really inspiring. That's been a big learning for me. It's a great point. I mean, it's interesting what you talk about. Two thoughts I have. One, the culture comments really interesting.

Because I find if we were to make 10 reels and one of them was how to rich, how to rich people think differently and the second was how to build a billion dollar culture. Nobody's watching the second wheel. Like, it's never happening. Nobody cares about culture until you're really, really successful. And then I feel like people, and that's a gross generalization. There's a few who don't, but it's mostly. But it's kind of wild that most people, and myself included, I was like, cute, culture, whatever, let's build this, get out of the way. And then as you scale, you realize, oh, it'll be the one thing that'll kill us. It's never your external enemies. It's not the, you know, enemies outside of the fort. It's the ones inside that you've let in, that you've created,

that you've become a part of that always end up killing your company or your culture or your happiness inside your business. Yeah, so we have this product. And it's only for like, startups that have found product market fit who can scale to multi-billion dollar companies, right? But so they're in less than 50 people. And it's just all about getting the essential culture really tight. And so they come for two, three-day off-sites and they do this. monthly practice, especially as AI is coming online, what's basically happening is more and more capital is going behind less and less talent, meaning the teams are smaller, they're higher paid, work is being commoditized, effort is being commoditized, knowledge is being commoditized.

So all that's left is creativity and teamwork. And decision making into your point. And decision making and wisdom, right? This is what's left. that is how well does a team work together. That's what that is. That is culture. And so we're moving into a time

where culture is going to become more important earlier and earlier and earlier because you're one accounting firm and another accounting firm and AI is going to do all the accounting. Yeah. What's going to be the difference? What's going to be,

it's going to be how well that team hums? It's interesting. I think also people don't like it as much. because it doesn't seem as quantitative. So you can say like, well, if you learn how to spend money on Facebook, you can get a two-to-one ROAS on your investment, and then you can scale and you can make your first thousand,

100,000, whatever, really easily. It's like, yeah, that's relatively quantitative. There's easy to put that in a framework and Excel spreadsheet and you can run. But if you really want to build big companies, you know, I think about we have this one company called Pinks, they're a window cleaning company. And that's not an innovative product set.

thing has been around forever. In fact, it's quite unsexy. But the difference in why they've scaled to a couple hundred locations all around the country and why most haven't is because the two founders are really cool. They've got a really cool culture. They are meticulous about, like, you have to have, you know, your pink sort of washcloth has to be like cleaned and folded a certain way. You know, the uniform has to be done particularly. The inside of the trucks have to be taken care of particularly. And so the type of people they attract to become franchisees and that employees is actually incredibly high for a window cleaner, right? You know, relatively speaking.

And so they've been able to scale. And it's not from what people typically think about in business. Right. Which is, let me show you how I can close you faster than somebody else with this perfect line. Right. Yeah. It's just not the case. So that's interesting.

The culture becomes more and more important when you're in a highly competitive, low margin, lower margin business. Culture becomes really important. And it becomes really important if you're in a super innovative business. The places where culture can, like, you can get away with it is if you're in a high margin, not so innovative business. I mean, you basically run meetings for a living in some ways. Like, you know, basically nonstop.

Yeah, yeah. Most meetings suck. Yes. How do you run a meeting that doesn't suck? That is a fantastic question. There's so many things. There's like, I've literally written out 20 chapters of like outlined, like, how to have great meetings. Some essential points.

If you ever have a meeting where the outcome is we should have more meetings, that meeting sucked. That's, you know, recognizing what the meeting's purpose is before you do it. But and then there's, so there's all the like kind of classic things that I don't want to go into. I would say the mechanism that I, so, and one of the things we'll do is we'll take companies and we'll say, just send us your meeting and we'll dissect your company. We will tell you everything that is dysfunctional about your company from a single meeting. You can see the whole thing.

It is so much fun. For you. For me. So there's so many ways it's dysfunctional. But the main thing is, if you don't like the meeting, change it. No matter who or where you are in the organization, everybody in the organization should have the ability to say, this meeting sucks right now. And that's the quickest way to change the meeting because everybody knows if a meeting sucks.

And everybody knows what's sucking about the meeting. It's true. You know, at least half the room will be like, yeah, this, this is, this, this is what's sucking about this meeting. And if you actually just give people the empowerment to be able to change the meeting so that they're more effective, that they will become more effective. And there's other like little tricks. Like if I have, if I have an executive team, I'll make sure that each of them run the

meeting a different week that not one person's running the meeting over and over again. And then their job is to improve the meeting. Each person who runs the meeting improves it. And this is a really good thing because typically what happens in an executive team or in a team is, let's say you're the boss. Then everybody projects mom and dad shit onto you. And so they'll rebel against you like a mom or a dad or they'll try to please you like a mom or a dad. But all of those dynamics go away when they're reporting to a team. When they realize it's not, I'm not letting Cody down.

I'm letting the team down. And so the more you spread the authority through the team, the quicker it goes. So that's another like trick on making meetings better. But generally, meetings should not be boring. They should be super exciting. You should learn a lot through the meeting. And if there's a way to avoid it, avoid the meeting. Yeah.

Interesting. That's super, super helpful. I mean, we think about this a lot and we are not. I always think we have failed in some way. when we keep having to have meetings, it means we're not. That's okay. It just means we're not good enough yet to do this. And there was a period where we tried to do no meetings.

We're not good enough to do that. That was a total fucking nightmare. And so, and we found most of our companies that we advise that our small businesses have to have actually a lot of meetings because the rest of their organization is not very structured. Yeah. So other tricks never have a decision-making meeting that's more than five people? That's a good one. You at this point should never have one-on-ones probably or very rarely.

I'm so glad you said that. I used to get shit for that. No, it's so good because... Talk to me about should you have one-on-ones? If so, yes or no. Why? One-on-ones create more politics generally. One-on-ones means that you're asking different people to solve the problem instead of the

team solving the problem. And you want the team solving the problem. And especially at this level of organization, you want your team solving the problem. So you're not coming in and trying to get one person to do it. You're trying to get the team to do it. And therefore, everybody, I was responsible for the problem. Yeah.

How far down an org do you usually go with that? Like, I don't do one-on-ones anymore for that particular reason. I also found that they were utilized mostly, even by good people. It didn't mean in a bad way, but utilized mostly to progress somebody's individual agenda. Yes. And just led to more he said, she said, as opposed to what we've tried to do is when you have something hard to say, you're not allowed to say it if it's about another person and they're not in the room.

Because by and large, whenever we're not in the room. we have not done that, then you know, you're trying to play telephone with with two cans on a string wire. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, definitely. We have a thing in our company that says anything you say to anybody in the company, you should assume you just said to everybody in the company. And everybody, so when you say something to one of us, they have the freedom to say it to anybody at any time inside of the company. There is no secrets in our company. What are like, when you've gone into these big companies? Yeah. Like I want to Dave Ramp. Ramses, and he's become a buddy, too. And I remember he told me, we don't gossip at this company.

And I was like, okay. And then I went around to a bunch of people in his company, not sneakily, but I just met a bunch of them, was doing whatever. And so I was asking them, what's the deal with us no gossip? Like, that's for real? And he's like, yeah, it's so. And then they would repeat the same story, which is how I knew it was true. And they would say, yeah, the first time that you gossip, somebody would say, hey, by the way, I don't know if you know this year, we don't gossip. So it's just part of the company culture. The second time that you did it, if the same person caught you or leader or manager, whatever, you were fired. And so it was just like a no gossip thing.

No gossip. And I kind of love, it works for him. That is like his thing. But I love seeing that inside of companies because it feels like the best companies all have like one or three or five things that you're like, that is so unhinged and brilliant. Like, is there anything like that that you've seen from big companies? Oh, I mean, I'm not involved in this company, but one of my favorite examples. examples is Bridgewater films every single meeting, even one-on-ones. And then that meeting, it's not just filmed. Then the meeting goes out and then people take notes on how you could

have run the meeting better. It's like all constant feedback. It's that same thing. We're going to get constant iterative feedback. I think that's, and that's based on the principle that he has, which is transparent markets or efficient markets. And this business is a marketplace. And he recognizes the marketplace of a hedge fund. Everyone's trying to get, That's an example of like an amazing, an amazing example of somebody who's going all the way. I think Valve is also a company that does some, like, they decide their projects by where you roll your desk. So everybody has rolling desks.

I don't know if this is past COVID, pre-COVID, but basically the employees vote on what projects are going to. And this is a company that makes more money per person than Apple or Microsoft. Wow. Yeah. So they just basically have a fully. decentralized approach. Interesting.

And I think you can get away with like a deeply decentralized approach if you have those four or five really elegant rules in place that that maintain quality and fairness, like the Constitution or the Uber things. Yeah. Yeah, I liked my friend Amjad from Replit. He has a, he had like two things that I love that he does. And one of them is, I've stolen it. But one of them is he has an anti-sale on his recruiting page.

It's like all the reasons you should never join this company. Yeah. And I love that because a lot of them are intense. It's like if you don't want to work so hard, sometimes, you know, you don't see your family for a while. It wasn't exactly worded like that. Probably don't come here. You know, if you believe in closed source technology as opposed to complete open source

technology in every single way and you want personal accomplishments on any of this technology, don't come here. And those are aggressive statements. The way that we look at that, we do it a little bit differently. We were like, where do we want diversity? Where do we not want diversity? I don't want diversity with like dumb people. Like I don't want dumb people as a form of diversity in our.

And I can see some companies where dumb people, there's a place. Yeah. I don't want diversity. Everybody who works for us wants to grow as a human being and is, and if they don't feel like they're growing as a human being in our business, then it shouldn't be there. Yeah. But for a business to really be able to identify this,

This is where we don't want diversity, and this is where we do want diversity. Yeah. I think it's a really critical thing for building culture. Yeah, it's a good point. And most people haven't thought about it. No. No. And these days, for so long, you weren't even allowed to say that you don't want diversity in some way, shape, or form.

You know, you would have been killed. Like, your pink, it's called pink. Pink's. The pinks? Uh-huh. Like, we, we want, there's no diversity in anal retentiveness, apparently, right? Like, it's like, you are this kind of person if you're working here. Yeah.

And that's fantastic. Like, because why, why try to get somebody into your company that doesn't fit? Like, they're just going to be miserable. You're going to be miserable. It's horrible. Yeah, it really is. Yeah, we found at this company, one of the things that I prize more than anything else you said in the beginning is like less words more meaning.

I really struggle with a super repetitive, circular conversation, not grounded in data or facts. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it sounds like, duh, obvious, except a lot of people, that way. Yes. And so, you know, we've had executives before where I'm like, you're actually, your output is pretty decent. Yeah. But the way that you communicate is so inefficient for the company that this is just not the right place for you. You're going to have to find somewhere else where you can do this circular conversation continuously and not make me want to kill myself. Right. And that's not here, you know? No, but that's a, that's a great thing to know. I think that

there's two things that you're saying in that that I think are really critical for CEOs to know. the first one is that the proper, for lack of a better word, energetic structure of a company is that everybody should be trying to please the leader of the company. So why do I say that? If the leader is happy, then the company is doing well. If everybody besides the leader is happy, then the company is not doing well. So, and it's the nature of it. It's like everybody wants to make sure that the leader is happy. Like that's part of the thing. So that's like a really important piece. The other piece is as a leader, it's really important to be able to just be able to say because that's what I enjoy. Like I'm doing this because I want to enjoy this. And so,

but I extend that into our company as well. So as an example of this is every year we talk, if you're not excited that you get to work here and if we're not excited that you're working here, we're going to help, we're going to transition. And it's not like, are you doing a good enough job? It's like, I want to come in and I want to be freaking stoked to see you. I want to feel lucky. And like that standard, it's just been unbelievable for our success, but also just for my happiness. The leader happiness thing is interesting because I can't remember where I was,

but I was talking about the same idea, not even about me, a lot of our member companies. but there's only one person that like if you remove them writ large, your business collapses entirely. Yeah. And it's you know, I think it's so important that people like you are saying this because a lot of leaders have we, it feels like we've been trauma bonded over like entrepreneurial PTSD to the point where it only is fun if,

or it's only acceptable if we say everything is miserable all the time. Yeah, yeah. And if in any way, shape, or form we say, actually I want to be relatively happy in order to have endurance or sustainability in this. It's like, ugh, luss. You know, like, yuck. And so, but yet most companies fail because the person gives up, the person in charge. And then all of your employees, what are they going to do?

That's right. So I love hearing that, especially from somebody that works with people who, by and large. Also, if you're happy, the company's doing well. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like, don't you want your company to do well? I want to end on this question, which is, like, there's a lot of people that see themselves as self-reliant.

I don't need anybody. You know, people, these women, I don't need no man. You know, like, I can do this all by myself. You know, you're in my way, just watch me. I got this, right? This is like very cultural zeitgeist. And there's a whole segment of the internet I didn't know about called Elder Daughter, which is just all about how elder daughters are completely unreasonable and very self-reliant,

which I am one. So I was like, oh, this is interesting. This is all through line. But you basically say that success, is not self-reliance. Self-reliance can be like incredibly successful at a very small scale, but you can't grow anything of significance without the help of people. And the better you, the more you're like, I'm all alone as a CEO, the more you are in

self-reliance. The more you feel all alone, the more you're in self-reliance. The more you can't like walk into an office and go, oh my goodness, all those people, they're all here to make my life easier. How about that? And they all care enough to do that. Like as long as you can't see that, you're in a self-reliance mechanism. It means that you're having a hard time asking for what you want.

It means you're having a hard time asking for help. It means you have, you're not fully in your own authority and you rebel against authority. And so there's a lack of authority in the company often. There's this kind of weird thing that happens there that I could go into. it means that you have a hard time saying when you're hurt. So that's why a lot of the CEO trauma bonding happens or is like, I'm miserable, da-da-da-da, because they can't say, wow, it really hurts that you didn't do the thing that you said

you were going to do. And I noticed that I'm not trusting you as much right now. And I don't want that. How do we fix that? CEOs have a tendency not being able to do that because they're like, no, that way is going to be hurt because somebody, like, I'm not going to be. be taken care of because that's basically where self-reliance comes from is this idea that I'm not going to be taken care of that comes from childhood. When you can get over that, then your company can

explode. Like so well, like explode isn't grow very quickly because you unleash people to actually help you instead of having to manage everybody and tell everybody what to do and be like, oh, they didn't do it well enough, et cetera, et cetera. It's so good. I know I'm going to be going back to this episode, having all my leaders listen to it too. Where do you like people to follow you the most? We've got YouTube. YouTube. And it's just your name.

Joe Hudson. Yeah, YouTube. Yeah. If you want personal transformation, the best is going to the YouTube and the podcast and the coachings. Those are definitely the things that drive a lot of changing people. I get emails constantly of people's lives changing. Well, and I don't even know if I'm allowed to ask.

you this, but like, I bet you charge these guys a lot of money. A lot of money. A lot of money. I, most of what I do is I charge, we talk in five or six figures. I charge a percentage of what we grow together. Get the fuck out. I go by stock. What's the most amount of money you've ever been able to get from help? Have you been able to make like seven figures off of your help? I love that. That's a really smart way to do it. Yeah, so I just do it. I just like, if the company grows, like that, I told you about the thing, the council where we help people with the getting their culture right. We just take a percentage of the company. We don't even charge. So you're really selective on who you take because you're like,

you guys better be good, otherwise you're not getting me. If they're committed to their culture and they are in that 50 person or less company that has product market fit, we take them. Because that's, those are the criteria. We keep it simple. I love that. But yeah, so we just get a percentage of what we create. We stand behind the work. Thank you for being here with us today. We don't get to steal any of these people's upside, you know, but they got all your juice for nothing. So thanks for being on this podcast. This was so useful for me. And I know they're going to love it too.