The Tim Ferriss Show - #658: CEO Coach Matt Mochary — Live Coaching with Tim, Why Fear and Anger Give Bad Advice, How to Perform Personal Energy Audits, The Power of Accountability Partners, Delegation Tips, Strategies for Hiring the Right People, and More

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Starting point is 00:03:58 Hello boys and girls, ladies and germs. This is Tim Ferriss. Welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show, where it is my job to interview world-class performers from all different disciplines to tease out the lessons, habits, routines, favorite books, and so on that you can apply to your own lives. Thank you. as well as Brian Armstrong of Coinbase, Sam Altman, perhaps best associated or most associated with open AI these days. Well done, Sam, and many, many others. His philosophy and method are captured in both the Moshari coaching methodology, which is available as a free Google Doc, and in his book, The Great CEO Within, which is available on Amazon and also online as a free Google Doc. We will link to all of those in the show notes at

Starting point is 00:05:05 Tim.blog.com. And you can also find, I imagine, all of them, I believe, under the top right curriculum at MoshariMethod.com. As a former founder, CEO, and investor, Matt knows firsthand the challenges of those roles as well as solutions to the most commonly encountered problems. His coaching is not questions only. There is real guidance. Matt specializes in helping CEOs and their companies, or investment firms, transition from freewheeling startups to dominant enterprises. Matt, nice to see you. Thanks for making the time. Absolutely. It's fun to be you. And I should point out that with every guest, we always ask my team or I that they send any exploratory bullets or topics that we might be able to expand upon. And you set a great list. So we're going to dig into a number of those that you sent, as well as a few in my secret seven pages of my own notes.

Starting point is 00:06:06 And I thought we would begin with perhaps my emotional home bases, fear and anger. So the headline here is fear and anger give bad advice. So I will let you take this ball and run with it however you see fit, but I'll pass the mic and let you get after it. Sounds great. Fear and anger have good signal in that they warn, hey, there's something new here, pay attention. But usually the predictions that the brain then makes are far exaggerated and are trying to get us to do something to stay alive. But the reality is in this modern world, it's not a saber-toothed tiger that's attacking us and might actually physically kill us. It's some threat to our ego that will make us feel bad.

Starting point is 00:06:51 And so that it's unnecessary to yell at someone because we might feel bad, or it's unnecessary to not tell someone, hey, this performance that you have, it's actually not good enough. You need to do this in order to really perform well. But because of fear, we don't want the person to get hurt or rage quit or whatever. We don't give them the feedback at all. And then they continue to have their performance. So it's the predictions that are exaggerated, not the warning flag. And I think the most fun thing, Tim, if you're game for it, is to see how this shows up in your life. Sure. Yeah, let's roll up the sleeves. I'm happy to be the guinea pig. We'll see if I hit the abort button, but I'm happy to play in the meantime. So how should we begin

Starting point is 00:07:37 this grand experiment? Well, we pick someplace where you're feeling either fear or anger, and we unpack it. And of course, it's going to be pretty easy for me and the audience will see too. It's going to be pretty easy for them because they won't be feeling fear or anger about the subject. Only you will. So you're going to be the only one that has blinders on. The rest of us will see it pretty clearly. Yeah. Monkey dance, monkey dance. That's me right now. All right. So I would say the first thing that comes to mind right now for anger is, I'll give two examples that are clear and present for me right now. So the first is when I find myself engaged with what I would consider administrative work, management work, as opposed to making or

Starting point is 00:08:25 creative work. That could be, and it'll sound funny to hear me say this perhaps, given that I do delegate a lot and I'm the four-hour workweek guy, but if for whatever reason I end up being the person who has to chase down a specific K-1, for instance, some type of tax-related document because I'm the only one who has access or need to find a particular contact. Anything related to logistics, I end up feeling angry towards myself. This is an anger towards myself for not having created a system that removes these things from my life or from my calendar at the very least. So that's one. I'll give you another example,

Starting point is 00:09:10 which is a piece came out. It was sent to me this morning. And it's a huge piece in a major magazine about stoicism. And somehow my friend Ryan Holiday and I get labeled tech bros in these pieces all the time, which drives me fucking crazy because Ryan especially, I mean, he lives on a farm with donkeys and cows. He's not a tech bro. So I feel, number one, some righteous indignation in defending or wanting to defend Ryan.

Starting point is 00:09:36 And then secondly, the charge is usually that we have enabled mass throngs of tech bros to read Stoicism, in which case my thought is, well, would you rather have them reading Ayn Rand or Seneca or Marcus Aurelius? Probably better in the latter camp. But I get wound up. I get wound up. And the irony of the topic, Stoicism, and the fact that I'm getting angry about it is not lost on me. But nonetheless, this sometimes happens. So those are two that are

Starting point is 00:10:13 immediately present for me. In terms of fear, I would say, and this may be getting too far afield, maybe, maybe not. But I would say fear in any compartment of life tends to affect the other compartments, right? So I just recently, a handful of months ago, got out of a five-year relationship, and I'm 45. And so the starting from blank slate, and it was very amicable, and she's amazing, and we're still in touch and on good terms. But nonetheless, the idea of starting from square one, because we were so close to having kids, is extremely daunting. So I fear around that. I do have fear around that, being kind of like the dad who has to lean on one arm on his walker to throw the baseball to his kid or something

Starting point is 00:11:02 is not super appealing to me. And I'm sure hugely exaggerated, but those would be a few examples of anger and fear, respectively. Tim, the juiciest one there is your relationship and being on your own now. And so if you don't mind, that's where I'm going to go. I don't mind. Let's go for the juice. Okay. And I always want to make sure I really understand what's going on. So I'm always going to make sure that I acknowledge you until you say, yeah, that's it. Tim, what I'm hearing is you were in a five-year relationship where you were, this was your best friend, and now that's over and recently ended. And your thought is, how in the hell can I recreate that?

Starting point is 00:11:41 And the effort that I went to to find this person who really was, I thought, my soulmate in such huge amounts of effort. I just don't want to go through that again. Or can I even? Will people even find me attractive? Or whether they do or not, just the effort required. Oh, is that close? Yeah, there is a lot of that.

Starting point is 00:12:03 There's all of that, I would say. I would say this is probably going to sound egotgotistical i'm not so concerned about the last part meaning like i have very good self-care i've done a lot of work and i owe my ex-partner a lot of credit for encouraging me or i'd say us to go to workshops with, say, Gay and Katie Hendricks. I know you're familiar with their work and many others. So I think the toolkit that I have has improved dramatically in the last five years. So I'm less concerned about that. I wrote this piece some time ago, this was a handful of years ago, called 11 Reasons Not to Become Famous, and outlines some of the issues that you would be very familiar with vis-a-vis perhaps your own experience, but also the experience of many of your clients.

Starting point is 00:12:49 And dating can be a real minefield. There's a lot of crazy out there. And not just crazy, but there's a lot of premeditated exploitation or looking to use... I've had this experience personally a number of times where ulterior motives are not clear, but they exist nonetheless. And I would say the foundation upon which the love and vulnerability was based with my ex was extreme trust. I trusted her. I still trust her. She does not have a malicious bone in her body. And that made me feel safe enough to do all of the things that I described, to go into all the work, to engage in the way that I engage with her.

Starting point is 00:13:33 And that's the rarity for me. So finding a beautiful woman, not hard. Tons of beauty everywhere. Finding a successful woman or someone who has established her own identity in some capacity and is not overly free-floating, let's say, which is, I think, important to me, because I think there are side effects when either partner is overly amorphous in their direction. Also something that you can nail down pretty quickly, I think. It's the trust piece that is the bigger component for me. That's a larger fear.

Starting point is 00:14:09 And that is pretty ubiquitous in my life. I trust very slowly. And there are a lot of reasons for that. But that would be what I would add to your summary, which is also accurate. Just the, oh my fucking God, really starting from zero, all that work back to square one. There's a lot of just not wanting to deal with it. And frankly, because I met my ex in a very serendipitous way in person, when I look at dating apps and these various options, it is so, to me at least,

Starting point is 00:14:50 just demoralizing to think that I'm going to have to chip away at this ridiculous process by trying to be clever in text messages on some dating app, which I know is not the only option. But there's all of that wrapped into one, which equals, I would say, fear. And there's some anger wrapped into that as well. Why couldn't we figure it out? And I do think she was, probably is my soulmate, but I've come to realize that just because someone feels like or is your soulmate does not actually mean that you are compatible in all ways long-term. So I don't think there's a singular soulmate per se. That type of match does not immediately imply that you are compatible co-living in the same space, having a family, et cetera. That's a mouthful. I wasn't planning on

Starting point is 00:15:37 going into this, but I'm ready to. So your turn. Well, I appreciate your vulnerability because you're trusting all of us by sharing this. And so now what I'm hearing, Tim, is that not really what it's about or an additionally about is that let's get to the chase. I'm famous and I'm recognizable. People know who I am. And so when people come at me and if I'm going to be in the dating pool and women come at me, I'll never know. Or how the hell will I know? Are they doing this on a calculated basis because they want the famous Tim Ferriss know? Are they doing this on a calculated basis because they want the famous Tim Ferriss? Or are they doing this because they actually like me for me? And how the hell will I ever know? I haven't figured out a way of knowing up until now.

Starting point is 00:16:15 And that's my fear. My fear is that I'll just, we'll have no idea. Is that close? Yeah, that's close. There's definitely that. And I would say other fears would be that there's some transaction in mind. So years, many, many years ago, I mean, when I would go on dates, I had multiple women I've been on dates with were on date four or five. They're like, oh, by the way, I have a book coming out in three months. I'd love to get your advice on A, B, and C. I'm like, ah, I see. That's where this was going.

Starting point is 00:16:45 Okay. And there's like, ah, I see. That's where this was going. Okay. And there's that type of transaction. And then there are dangers in being a potential target of sorts. And then we don't have to get into all the specifics of that. But if you are public-facing and have a decently high profile, it doesn't even need to be that large. You become a target for all sorts of bad behavior. So there's that as well. But yes, everything that you said, and I would say more. Perfect. There's a certain point we're going to dive in. Maybe we'll do that now. So Tim, now that I've understood where you are, there is more, and I could ask you to keep going. In fact, let's go one layer deeper. There is more. Okay. Please tell me more. All right. I mean, there is more. It's just a question of which species is more. Please tell me more. I mean, there is more. It's just a question of which species.

Starting point is 00:17:26 What do you predict will happen? You're now going to, at some point, be back in the dating pool. What do you predict will happen? Or you're going to be single. That we know. You're going to be single. What do you predict will happen? What's the bad thing you predict will happen? Here's the bad thing I would predict would happen, is that I am afraid of engaging in the dating pool in so many ways that I just sit on my hands, stay home, watch Netflix. Perfect. Which is already on some level happening. So I think that would be the most obvious one. And when you sit around and just watch Netflix, then what bad happens? happens time passes i get older and i am not increasing the likelihood of finding someone i

Starting point is 00:18:09 want to have a family with or just have fun with i mean frankly it doesn't all have to be super heavy some for a lifetime some for a season some for a weekend that's all fine right so i'm not sort of placing all my bets on this binary lifetime partner or nothing, but I will not make any progress in beginning to try my chances at any of those things if I'm sitting at home watching Netflix. Perfect. So fear is already working negatively on me and that is causing me to sit home. But the fear of if I get out there,

Starting point is 00:18:46 that's really when I want to hone in. What happens then? Because the fear is that people will come at me for a transactional reason and I won't know that they like me for me. What happens then? What bad thing happens then? Bad thing that happens then, I mean, there are any number of things.

Starting point is 00:19:02 One would be that I just chase these false leads. I burn a month here, a month there, two months here, four months there, and a year and a half, two years from now, good God, I'm still exactly where I started effectively. That would be one. Another, frankly, and this is not something a lot of people are going to say, but I'll say it because it is a conversation for a lot of men I know, is getting accused of something they didn't do. If you go on a date with someone and you're by yourself with them and you don't even kiss them or do anything, you can still be accused of all sorts of heinous things. And that happens. That is a reality. If someone thinks they can extract

Starting point is 00:19:47 money from you. Absolutely. Perfect. Two predictions. One, Matt, I'm going to get out there. I will not have this filter for whether someone is really into me for me. And therefore, I'll only find out later. It'll be disappointment after disappointment, disappointment. Two years later, I'll be right where we are right here, right now. I could have just watched Netflix for two years and been in the same place. Second prediction is that someone somewhere will accuse me of something that I didn't do. Is that right? Yeah, and maybe in private to try to extort before the threat of X, Y, and Z. But that stuff, I know dozens of people who are founders of companies or otherwise

Starting point is 00:20:28 well-known who have these stories. So it's not that rare an occurrence. But I would push back, I'm just going to push back a little bit on the term prediction. It's really thinking about likelihoods. And I can't place an exact percentage on it, but let's just say likelihood of ending up right where I am five months from now, I would say very high. I would say that's more than 50% likely. The latter case, the extortion type of case is probably 10%, but it's 10% of a very high downside potential, right? So the way I am, and I recognize this as both a strength in some cases, but a super weakness in others, I orient to life in a very hypervigilant way. So from childhood abuse and various things, my entire system is just optimized at this point, still is, I've worked on it, to observe everything with very

Starting point is 00:21:28 high sensitivity and if there is a risk to try to risk mitigate in every possible way. So I tend to minimize downside more than I optimize upside, if that makes sense. Yeah. I just thought that might be helpful to know. Which also, by the way, Tim, is fear-based. Oh, 100%. Right. 100%. Where I'm driving towards, and I'll just give away what I'm doing, is I'm driving towards getting you to predict something that you think actually will happen. And the reason is, is because I want to prove to you that your fear is making an exaggerated prediction. And the only way I know of to do that is to make a bet with

Starting point is 00:22:03 you. So you're going to say, I predict A. Okay. And then I'll say, you know what, Tim? I don't think that's going to happen. I predict B, which is the exact opposite. And I've made these bets hundreds of times and I have never lost. And that's not because I'm a magician. It's because I'm not in fear.

Starting point is 00:22:18 This is your life. The consequence is to you, not to me. But once we make that bet, and if I win, then the reward is, is that in the future, whenever you share something with me and I say, hey, Tim, you're in fear, you got to outsource your thinking to my prediction, not your prediction. And this is a mechanism that helps people click and realize, oh, shit, my fear really is giving me bad advice because they really do believe the prediction. So, Tim, I'm going to try to nail you down on something you think will actually happen not likelihood

Starting point is 00:22:48 don't you think it can be little i'm a slippery pig yeah you can be like you know something as little as matt i predicted it's going to be just like ugh painful to go through the dating process until i find okay great yeah do you think it's going to be i i would say my i'll use the word prediction sure my prediction is on some level uh most of this not all of it i don't expect all of it but like most of this is just going to be a hard slog of me doing things i don't want to do to try to increase the chance happenings that lead to meeting different people and that it's going to be more exhausting than fun. That would be my prediction. Excellent. More exhausting than fun. That's a definitive. Yeah. Tim, I predict the exact opposite. I think you're going to have

Starting point is 00:23:38 more fun than exhaustion. You're going to meet a ton of super fun people and you're going to have serendipitous experiences that delight you. That's it. I say more fun than exhausting and you say more exhausting than fun. And I'll trust you. Yeah. How does the bet work? So we'll pick a timeframe and I'll just ping you and say, Tim, more fun than exhausting

Starting point is 00:24:02 or exhausting than fun. And you'll come back with an answer. Yeah. and say, Tim, more fun than exhausting or exhausting than fun? And you'll come back with an answer. And if you win, then from now on, I can never give you, point out that you're in fear and outsource your thing to me. You're in control for the rest of your life. And so we'll see. Do you mind if I stray from the exercise a little bit? I'm just very curious. You work with a lot of high profile folks. Yeah. And of course, not to name names, but how have you seen people navigate this in an effective, efficient way? Because I am not, I know for a fact, I'm not the only person who has these concerns. This is really common.

Starting point is 00:24:40 Dating? No, this is a first for me. In terms of fear? Absolutely. I mean, pretty much every single person I coach, this is a first for me in terms of fear absolutely i mean pretty much every single person i coach this is where we start and so yeah all the people you mentioned this is where we start yeah and they did have something they felt fear about and i did make a bet with them and they did the thing and turns out my prediction was right not theirs and then boom mind blown then they started to be very receptive when I said they were in fear. But then over time, they started to catch themselves being in fear. And now they no longer even need me to point it out because they catch themselves and they see the pattern.

Starting point is 00:25:16 And so they lean into the thing that they feel fear about. And it's giving them such big gifts that now the pattern is broken. Not for me to give up too easily. If dating is a first, which is surprising to me, but I have to imagine your clients are very transparent with you, some of them in a holistic way. If they are running an organization and they just had a divorce, that is a material factor that affects their ability. So they end up talking to you about it. So I guess what I'm asking is within the group of, let's just say single, newly single, fill in the blank folks who would like to have a partner, what have you seen them do that has worked for them besides just using five different dating apps? Get out there, get off the damn couch, make a list of three things you want to do this week,

Starting point is 00:26:27 or one thing, one thing that will advance. The goal is to meet someone that you connect with on an insanely deep level eventually. What is one thing, Tim, you can do? Is that the goal? Tell me what the goal actually is. Three months from now, you will say, damn, I crushed it. As long as what happened? I think what you just described would fit the bill. Or frankly, if I went out and it was more energy giving than energy draining, it doesn't have to actually be finding the one because I think that's too much pressure. And honestly, three months, I have no idea if that's going to work or not, but just going out and having it be more energy giving than energy draining.

Starting point is 00:27:06 Perfect. So basically have it be that Matt won the bet in three months. Correct. Perfect. Yes. Okay, great. What's one action you can take?

Starting point is 00:27:15 What's the next action you need to take towards getting there? Putting myself on a limited Netflix diet and probably group activity of some type, whether that's going to a dance class or asking a friend to help organize a group dinner, something along those lines. I just don't do well in going to bars is not my native environment. Dating apps, not my native environment. So probably asking friends for help to organize some type of group dinner or activity. That would be step one. Fantastic. How many friends would you like to ask? Because they're

Starting point is 00:27:49 all going to be super eager to jump in and set up group dinners or invite you to dance classes or... Yeah, making it specific. I like triangles, three. Let's go three. Perfect. Why not? Excellent. By when will you have asked three friends to help set something up that you can do? End of this week. I can do that. Fantastic. That being Friday or Sunday? I would say Friday. Perfect. Since I like to take the weekends off of tasks when possible. Are you writing this down in a place that you'll see it and remember it? Yep. Excellent. And I'll send you a note afterwards.

Starting point is 00:28:28 I'm good at that part. I'm very good at taking notes. Okay, great. And I'll check in on you at the end of the week to make sure you've actually done it. Or what you can do even better is once you've done it, please ping me. But either way, we'll check to make sure it gets done. And really, Tim, that's it. That's it. Coaching right there. I force you to write down inaction because when else will you

Starting point is 00:28:53 have the time to think about this in this dedicated refaction? If it's not now, it's never. Exactly. And then I'll just follow up and make sure you did it. And there's some amount of shame in not doing something when you know someone out there, a real life human being knows you committed to it. And so you will do it or you won't. Yes. And then I'll ask you why. And I will be. And you'll come up with some, you know, BS excuse. By my public confession. Exactly. And then what I'll do is I say, okay, so if you don't do it, I'll literally ask you why. And you'll say, oh, I forgot. Or, oh, I don't know.

Starting point is 00:29:27 I just felt tension or whatever it is. And I'll say, okay, do you still want to do it? And you'll say, yes, I still want to do it. Great. What can you do to not forget it again? What can you do to not feel the tension? Whatever it is that blocked you, what can you do to not get blocked? And then you'll declare that and you'll do that thing.

Starting point is 00:29:45 And then you will actually go ahead and do the action. And once you do that action one time, then it's done. Then the dam is broken and you're flying. So once you do this one action, Tim, the hardest action you're ever going to do in this whole process is the very first. Because once you do the first, all of a sudden, it'll work. Your friends will organize things and they'll be fun. You'd be like, oh my God, this is great. I actually predict, Tim, that it's not going to be three months before you're having more fun than exhausting. I believe it's the first event that you show up to, which will probably be next week. All right. I appreciate the pep talk. I'm into it. I've taken my note and I have made my timeline commitment. So there you have it. And if I have a BS excuse, you will help me make the BS less

Starting point is 00:30:35 defensible. And then I will have to choose between taking some first action or extreme shame over my own inability to execute on something I probably don't do. I'm not going to make you feel shameful. I'm just kidding. I know. I know. I'm just using what they call in the trade some dramatic flourish. So I want to actually segue from this, and I'm happy to come back to it. This is not me. No, that was great. That was it. That's the whole process. So founders you've worked with, including Steve Huffman, is it Huffman? I think I'm pronouncing that correctly. I've actually never said that out loud. Co-founder of Reddit

Starting point is 00:31:10 have said that you always turn conversations into action items. As you just saw. As I just saw, which is why I'm bringing this up. So are there other techniques that you use or approaches that you use for this? Or is there anything you'd like to say as to how this fits into the larger picture of just being an effective, high-performing person or organization? I'll let you expand on that, or we can move on. But I thought I'd bring it up since this was a question I was going to ask you. I mean, a lot of people ask me, Matt, what's unique about you? Why are you considered the best CEO coach? And I have a hard time answering the question because I think what

Starting point is 00:31:53 I do is very simplistic. But one of the things I've noticed that I do different than others is this what I call bias to action. We're not going to leave a conversation without you having at least one, two or three actions to take, because I think this time spent together is so expensive for you, for me, frankly, that if we're just going to think deeply about things, come to answers that are likely, very likely to work and then not turn them into actions and do them and me not follow up and specifically see if you did them, but then just go to another meeting two weeks from now and start all over a super expensive time and ideate, but not have done anything in between to me is just like my stomach

Starting point is 00:32:37 curls when I think about that. So my coaching is all about driving towards an action and I have a system and the system is all about writing that down and checking to make sure it got done. And that's it. And I find it works with individuals. It works with teams. It works with companies. And it's called accountability. And it can be done in a micromanaging, shameful way.

Starting point is 00:33:01 Or it can be done in a, I'd like to help you succeed way. And of course, as a coach, you can stop coaching with me anytime. So it's much easier for me to make it feel like I'm trying to help you succeed way. If I'm your boss and giving you a paycheck and you're afraid to let go of the paycheck, then it can easily feel like I'm micromanaging you. But there is no difference. When I coach someone, I become their manager, period, end of story. And if by the third meeting, they feel more successful, more engaged, more empowered, then they know the system works. And it's all written out.

Starting point is 00:33:36 So you can just copy, paste, use with their team members, and then it works with their team members as well. Let's look a little more closely at accountability accountability because this is one of my favorite topics. And I mean, the tools can be rusty. They can be even mediocre in a lot of cases. But if you use them routinely, it's a lot better than the person who has a pristine, perfectly sharpened tool that never gets used. And for me, and I've thought and written about this a lot as

Starting point is 00:34:06 it relates to behavioral modification, which is what we're talking about in many respects, whether that's diet, exercise, quitting smoking, starting a new behavior, whatever it might be, New Year's resolutions, that accountability beats elaborate planning most of the time. I would say all the time. All the time. Great. So let me read something. And this is, I believe this is either something written by you or your team. And I'd love to hear you elaborate on it. If we have to do something that isn't fun and we're alone, it is painful. But if we're in the presence of another human, then we're usually okay to do that thing, which isn't fun. Who that other human is doesn't matter

Starting point is 00:34:42 too much. It can be our child, our EA, or any other random person. Could you give an example of how this might work? Because I found this to pique my curiosity. I find that there are generally personality types that I encounter when coaching. And one big bucket is introvert versus extrovert. And obviously it's a sliding scale, but people generally fall one side or the other. And extroverts I've noted, and I'm an extrovert, just feel more comfortable around humans. And there are these solo tasks. This goes back to, in the beginning, you talked about your anger, your frustration around having to do these administrative tasks that don't create any value, but only you can do them because you're the

Starting point is 00:35:22 investor named investor individually. So only you can get the K one and your assistant can't get it because she's not you. And what a pain in the ass and you've got to do it. And you're probably doing it alone and you're probably going, and so I have things like that as well. And plenty of extroverts have things. There's some amount of stuff you just got to do. And so what I've noticed is in my own life, and I've recommended this to many people and they've done it like, oh my God, that's amazing, is just having another living, breathing human in the room creates a sense of peace, enough of a sense of peace that these tasks no longer feel so annoying because our body is no longer so sensitized. We're sensitized, extroverts are sensitized when they're in the alone position.

Starting point is 00:36:07 But when they're not alone, their bodies just aren't as sensitized. And so these tasks become less onerous. And I've literally hired people to sit in my office with me on a couch, reading a book while I do administrative tasks. And it works. And I've recommended this to dozens of people and they

Starting point is 00:36:26 now do it and it works for them. Do you find that to help for introverts? Like I'm a Myers-Briggs INTJ, not that I put too much stock in Myers-Briggs, but nonetheless, just as a footnote, do you find that also translates to introverts? It may. Most of the times the people who have really latched onto this are extroverts, just because they're feeling even more pain. There's only one way to know, Tim. Would you be open to trying it and see if it works? Yeah, for sure. What I found is that the person really matters.

Starting point is 00:37:00 Even though I'm introverted, I don't like being physically isolated. Talking to people all the time, don't want to do it, which is why I figured out how to do a one-on-one podcast that gets listened to by a lot of people, but it's not actually having conversations with all those said people because from a battery perspective, it's just not my constitution to be able to handle that. I have found that if it's someone I know or have a direct connection with on some level, maybe it's someone I could even just hire to read on the couch, that the emotional tenor and grounding of that is different from going to a coffee shop or a library and sitting around strangers, which tends to make me feel unemployed or like a crazy person

Starting point is 00:37:46 because both of those demos are pretty well represented depending on where you go to your coffee shop and library. So that strikes me as something I would try for sure. Perfect. Is there someone you can think of that you'd want to invite to sit with you? That you feel comfortable? Yeah. I would say I'm actually already doing this on some level. I've taken this action. It's the friend that I excommunicated from this apartment

Starting point is 00:38:12 while recording this podcast. Fantastic. It'll be that friend. Okay, great. He's in the same boat. So we've been working together, which makes a big difference. And has that been helping?

Starting point is 00:38:21 Yeah, absolutely. Excellent. Okay. Then you answered the question. Thank you. Yeah. What is Focus. Okay. Then you answered the question. Thank you. Yeah. What is Focusmate? Focusmate is an online app, costs five bucks a month, which just sets you up for this. They just pair people who are both have admin tasks to do and they're alone. And for 50 minutes, you just sit on a screen with someone. I mean, it's freaking

Starting point is 00:38:41 genius. Amazing. That's amazing. Okay. I may just try that out of curiosity, sheer curiosity to see what effect that has. Yeah. I would say it's online, so it's not quite as effective as the in-person. It's just much easier to schedule. Yeah. That makes sense. Just a quick thanks to one of our sponsors and we'll be right back to the show. This episode is brought to you by AG1 by Athletic Greens. I get asked all the time what I would take if I could only take one supplement. The answer is invariably AG1. I view it as my all-in-one nutritional insurance. I recommended it long ago in my 2010 number one

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Starting point is 00:39:58 nutritional supplement bundle in one easy scoop. And Athletic Greens is giving you a free one-year supply of vitamin D and five free travel packs with your first subscription purchase. Go to athleticgreens.com slash Tim. You can check it out, athleticgreens.com slash Tim. They also offer a 90-day money-back guarantee if you are not 100% satisfied. Learn more, try it out. Athleticgreens.com slash Tim. So let's, if you're open to it, and we can always round back to other things, but move to decision-making. So the prompt that I have here is separate decision from implementation. What does this mean? This was something I learned recently.

Starting point is 00:40:46 One of the beautiful things about my coaching is that I feel like I'm the student. I have not invented anything. Everything that I do, I learn from somebody else or read in a book, which is also learning from somebody else. And I'm just packaging it in a way that's easy to understand.

Starting point is 00:41:00 So this comes from Wee Dang, who is the CEO of Clipboard Health, who's just, she's mind-blowing. I've learned so much from her. And we were sitting around at a Sequoia CEO retreat that brought like 10 CEOs to Kauai to see me. And the idea was I was going to sit and coach them for three days. And so I did. And we're getting there, bringing up their issues and sort of, we would, but I didn't want me just be sitting there. So I would have everybody sort of write in their thoughts. And then whoever the CEO was answer, they were more drawn to, they would ask that person to expound. And Wee Dang ended up being the person that people want to hear from way more than for me and me too. I mean, her answers were insanely good. And she shared with us this rubric, which is really identifying fear that oftentimes

Starting point is 00:41:45 when you're having a difficult time making a decision, it's because you're conflating the decision itself with the implementation of the decision. So it's pretty damn clear what you need to do, what the right decision is, because there's a constituency here that you're trying to optimize for. So in any organization, there's a human that you are prioritizing. So if it's a company, you're probably prioritizing the customer. If it's an investment firm, you're probably prioritizing your LPs. If it's your own personal life, you need to be prioritizing you.

Starting point is 00:42:23 And then there's implementation. There's someone who, when you know that what's right for the customer and you implement it, someone's going to get hurt. Maybe it's that you have someone who's not performing well. If you're making a decision just for the customer, clearly you would let go of this person. But you know this person is in the middle of getting a divorce, Christmas is coming, and their children, you know, how will the person pay for the private school tuition their kids are in, and you don't want to be the one to impose that pain and suffering on that person. So you

Starting point is 00:42:59 have a really hard time making this decision. But if you separate the two and think, okay, customer needs this person to let go, this person will be pained, and I will be pained too. So I'm going to get hurt by the implementation. Then think of, well, what does this person who's going to get hurt by the implementation, what is it that they really want? So the person who's going to be fired, what they really want is financial security. They want to find a place where they are valued, they are needed, and pays enough money to cover their life expenses. You, what do you really want? You don't want to be the bad guy. You want to not impose pain on someone. You actually want to help someone find their place where they can have what they want, which is financial security.

Starting point is 00:43:43 So what do you do? You then think about how can I achieve that in the implementation? Well, you can achieve that by becoming the person's career agent. You say, this is not working here, but I want to help you find the place that's going to work for you. So I know that you're passionate about A. Right now we we're having you do B, and you're not great at it, but A, you're great at. Let's find a place that needs A, and I will wholeheartedly recommend you for A.

Starting point is 00:44:16 In fact, I'm not going to just recommend you. I'm going to go out and advocate for you. I'm going to send out tweets. I'm going to send out emails. I'm going to send out texts to people saying, this guy or woman is fantastic at this. Can you please consider them? Because as an agent, one hour of time spent will equal a hundred hours of time spent by the candidate themselves. Once you're able to separate the two, once you say, what's best for the customer, clearly that's what's best. How do I minimize the damage on

Starting point is 00:44:42 the person that gets hurt? Now you can actually go forward and you can make a good decision that doesn't actually hurt people unnecessarily. That all makes sense. And I think this is a place where it also makes sense to look at one of the other bullets, which is firing well. And I will just add to set the table that I'm sure there are cases where you can dramatically help an employee who is soon to be an ex-employee by doing the advocacy you mentioned. But there are other cases where someone lies or there's some type of

Starting point is 00:45:16 fraudulent behavior and you need to let them go. And there would be extreme reputational risk in recommending that person. Now there's a lot of law around what you can or can't do in all these cases, but it might complicate matters. So I'm just curious to know what your best practices are for firing well, in addition to what you just mentioned, and maybe addressing the instance of problem employees. We're not just underperforming, but do something that catalyzes the firing. So let's take the ones that are just firing well generally. And you basically heard it. It's recognizing that when someone gets let go, it's a major life trauma. There are sort of three pillars in your life. There's your

Starting point is 00:46:01 home where you live, there's your most significant relationship, and then there's your job. And if any one of those collapses at any one time, it's a major trauma. If two collapse or even God forbid three, it's like, oh, mental game over. And you sort of reboot. And so recognizing that when someone's experiencing trauma, their brain just does not work well. So it's very difficult for them to do a job search and advocate for themselves. I mean, there's a corollary. You just lost your significant relationship. Now you're thinking about the effort. It's not a job search. It's a partner search and the pain that, oh, how it feels overwhelming. So you're just not even starting. Whereas the same thing people

Starting point is 00:46:45 happens in a job search. And of course, what your friends can do to be helpful to you is help you begin, help you create the setting for that. So you don't have to do it completely on your own. That's the corollary here. The manager can help take the first few steps for the person. So they don't have to take those steps entirely on their own. That's it. That's all we're talking about here. That's firing well. And the reason it's important to do, because obviously you think, well, this person isn't capable and why should I be helping them and spending time with them? Shouldn't I be spending time with people who stay here, who want to be here, who are performing? And the answer is, is that the people who stay

Starting point is 00:47:22 are watching and they're watching how you treat this person. Because everybody at the company thinks at some point I might be let go. And if that happens, what will happen to me? And if they see that you treat this person who got let go well and really help them, then all of a sudden a collective sigh of relief goes through your company. It's silent. You won't hear it, but it'll eliminate fear. And when people eliminate fear, then their brains work better and they'll perform better for you. So you can actually look at this

Starting point is 00:47:57 as a very self-interested action. I think it is. You don't need to be selfless to help people when you let them go. You can be very selfish and actually do this. Now, the second part of your question was, well, what about criminal behavior? Tim, I like your edge cases of the hundreds of companies I've coached and the tens of thousands of employees, maybe even hundreds of thousands of employees within those companies. No one has ever brought to me, I need to let this person go for criminal behavior. of thousands of employees, maybe even hundreds of thousands of employees within those companies, no one has ever brought to me, I need to let this person go for criminal behavior. Now, I need to let this person go for what I've considered to be extreme incompetence.

Starting point is 00:48:43 I can't imagine they're good at anything. And in there, I urge the CEO to get curious. Yeah. And just to be clear, I wasn't saying exclusively criminal behavior, but if someone is so bad, or, I mean, that would be a case, or someone, you look at their accounts payable and you're like, wow, we are 60 days behind in paying our vendors. This should never happen.

Starting point is 00:48:59 And this can't happen. Therefore, this person needs to be let go. Yes. Because maybe conversations have been had, et cetera. So it's not just criminal behavior. I will push back a little bit and say there is criminal behavior. I mean, I know a lot of CEOs like there's bad behavior. I'm sure there is. It doesn't exist, but I'm not limiting my hypothetical to that. Maybe the CEOs I coach have just not brought that behavior to me because they don't want me to

Starting point is 00:49:20 cause them to fire that person. Well, yeah. or that might be a question for the general counsel. Right. Exactly. Exactly. But when there is a situation, because this definitely does happen where people say this person is so horrible, so egregiously irresponsible, I can't reckon them then to anyone for anything. Well, clearly, and then I would encourage that CEO or that manager to just wait till time passes, wait till the anger dissipates until they can get curious. Go to that person and find out. Say clearly the facts are this. You are not qualified to do this role. Or clearly you don't seem to be passionate about this role. But what are you passionate about? What do you really enjoy? And they'll say something and then say, well, let's see if that can be translated into some kind of money-making effort. And almost always it can. And what I find is that many, many, many people, and this is another issue

Starting point is 00:50:22 with an energy audit we can get into, are actually stuck in roles that they don't like. Some they're good at and they get paid well for it, so they continue to do it. But over time, if you don't like something that you're doing, in the end, you won't do it well. You can't. Because you're competing against the person, there are people out there who do like it and they will study it and learn more and give energy towards it. And even if they're less experienced over time, they will surpass you and far surpass you. So I find that generally humans are not incompetent. What they are is they're uninterested. But if you can find a place where they're interested, suddenly they become very competent. And if you can't find that place and you need to let them go, what does that conversation

Starting point is 00:51:12 look like? Since you're not going to want to go on Twitter and so on. Yeah. I mean, if they don't want to play ball and if they won't share with you what their passions are, what they might be interested in or where they might want to do that you agree with, they'd be good at, then you can't help. It's like, if I'm trying to coach someone and they don't want to be coached, it's nothing I can do. But you've tried. That's all. You've made the offer. Got it. And this gets a follow-up question from me, which is related to recruiting. And I know you and I chatted a little bit before we from me, which is related to recruiting.

Starting point is 00:51:48 And I know you and I chatted a little bit before we started recording, but I'd like to explore this for the following reason. In job interviews, oftentimes candidates, almost always candidates, will try to paint themselves in the most positive, enthusiastic light possible. And I've had the experience of hiring people where the obligations and responsibilities are laid out, not always in the, maybe the granularity that you would suggest, and maybe we can talk about that, but there is an enthusiastic hell yes to all of those said things. And then six months later, lo and behold, they are extremely unenthusiastic and uninterested in half of those things.

Starting point is 00:52:25 And it's kind of this, oh, fuck, goddammit, situations that perhaps I'm hoping with a different approach could have been avoided. But I'm not the only person I'm imagining who has had this experience. So what are some of your thoughts and recommendations for effective and efficient recruiting? So there's two major categories in recruiting. One is evaluating and two is selling. Because of course, when you find a great person, you're not the only person that found them. So you got to make sure they come to you and not elsewhere. And so evaluating has a few parts. Selling has a few parts. Selling part is one, you need to minimize the time you spend with people that you don't hire. So you can maximize the time you spend with a person you do want to hire

Starting point is 00:53:10 because selling, it turns out, requires a lot of time. Effective selling. So now let's go back though to evaluating. We'll come to the selling afterwards. Evaluating. I find exactly what you find, that there are some people out there who are just really good at interviewing, especially relationship people, salespeople, those types of people. And it doesn't indicate at all their ability to perform the job or their willingness to perform the job later on. I find that only two things matter when it comes to evaluating. One is, how has the person performed in the past? We'll start with that. The second is, can I scare them away from the dirty realities of this job? So, but we'll start with the first. How have they performed in the past?

Starting point is 00:53:54 This is why people do reference checks, but most people do indirect reference checks. Like we know everyone in Silicon Valley, so we see the places they've worked. So I'll just contact all the people I know that worked at the companies they worked at and see how this person is viewed. That's actually a terrible system. The reason that's a terrible system is because very rarely will you know the manager of that person at that company. Instead, you know some random person at that company who didn't really interact with this person. All they know about this person is their internal reputation, which also is not at all indicative of the actual work they do. So instead, what I do is when I interview and I meet someone, I think, oh my gosh,

Starting point is 00:54:35 this person's amazing. I'll tell them immediately. I'd like to do, and I stole all this from the book WHO, W-H-O, which I think is the best book on recruiting there is and he simply says you do what's called the top grading interview where you go job by job that they've had since college and you ask them who'd you work for who's your manager so and so great can you please spell that for me write down the name next job who is your manager next job who is your manager and maybe teammates as well but manager for sure then I go through that whole list. And at the end, I've got 10, 20, 30 names. And then I say to the person, I'd like to hire you pending reference interviews. So can you please connect me with, and I choose one, two, three, up to

Starting point is 00:55:19 however many, seven people, but at least three. And I asked the candidate, can you please connect me with that person? And then the interview I'm doing is of their former managers. And that's where I get insanely good information. Okay. So you go through that process and you've discovered that this person actually really is good. They actually really perform great. Now I find that's not enough. It's what you described before where you said six months into it, they're no longer interested. That's what I'm trying to prevent. So I then come back to the person and say, listen, your references were fantastic. I think you're amazing. But before you make this decision, I want to try to scare you away from the reality. So I'm going to tell you the worst things about this job. And I do, in fact, I'll do this before I do even do the top grading or the reference

Starting point is 00:56:05 interviews, because I'm trying to disqualify the candidate as early as possible before I spend any time with them. So I'll tell them when I first meet them and I think they're great, most people will turn to start selling. I go the opposite direction. I start anti-selling and I'll say it's long hours. We work in California time and we're remote. If you're in Russia or Ukraine or wherever you are, your day starts at 10 p.m. and ends at 6 a.m. If you are in whatever the worst things about this role are, I'm going to explain to you and see if I can scare you away. And then if the person still is interested and still want,

Starting point is 00:56:43 now they know, i find those people stay interested in the role because it's always better when they arrive than what i described because i only describe the bad parts so that's evaluating next so now we've got your candidate who has performed well in the past you've anti sold them and they still want to join great they are going to perform The problem is they're superstars and everybody else wants them too. And so I find selling is key and selling requires really getting to know the person and finding out about them and taking the time to understand their dreams, their fears, their angers. And also they probably have a partner and the partner isn't excited to join

Starting point is 00:57:25 your company, but is feeling fear around, let's say you're a tech startup. So there's lower cash pay, but more equity. And that person doesn't give a crap about the equity and just sees less cash pay. And so they're feeling fear. So I, one, ask to speak to the spouse so that I can understand his or her concerns and address them directly. And two, I use speed. So from the moment that I meet someone until the moment that I'm able to say, I love you and I want you to work here and I want to make you an offer, I endeavor to have that be very few days so that the person feels like, whoa, Matt has so much conviction about me. Like from the minute he met me, he loved me and just boom, boom, boom. And the way to do

Starting point is 00:58:12 that again is to minimize the time I spend with people I don't want to hire. So my first interview with someone is never more than 15 minutes because within the first five minutes, I know whether I'm energetically pulled to someone or not. And if you look back on the great people you hired, Tim, I would guess that you also knew within the first five minutes of meeting the person that you love them or were intrigued. Yeah. One of my, I would say biggest handicaps right now is I veto. I tend to use analytics and kind of hard number crunching and references to override that first impression. That is something that I've deliberately taken to working on. But that is, whenever there's been an issue, I usually spot it in the first 30 minutes. If I end up hiring somebody and those issues come up and I saw them in the first 30 minutes. And this is where I just need to wait my first immediate reads more heavily than kind of the textbook

Starting point is 00:59:13 recommendations, if that makes sense. Absolutely. Because you're the one that has to work with them. So it's that chemical reaction that you're going to keep having over and over again with them, no matter whether they worked well with someone else or not. And so I only have, again, 15 minutes, not even 30, 15 minutes, because that's what I schedule. Because if I end up loving the person in those 15 minutes, I know they haven't scheduled anything else in the next 15 minutes and neither have I. Right. So then I can immediately start going into, hey, let's keep this going. Now I'm really enjoying this. Let's find out if this is really a place you want to be. That's when the anti-selling begins and we can continue the process.

Starting point is 00:59:50 That's it, Tim. Those are the things. And so I would say for you, don't let anyone else, when your intuition says no, end it right there. Because what you want to do is you want to preserve your time for the moment when your intuition says yes. And let go of a hundred people and don't say yes unless your intuition tells you. All of this doesn't work if you don't have the ability to fire. Because if you don't have the ability to fire, then you will feel fear. You will feel like, oh my God, I've got to make sure this is the perfect hire because this person is going to be with me forever.

Starting point is 01:00:29 You won't say that consciously, but subconsciously, you'll know you don't know how to fire. You're not able to do it. If you're going to have a world-class team, every single person you hire has to be world-class from the get-go. That is pressure that is unrealistic. There is no system that is perfect. You will screw up. Our people's lives will change.

Starting point is 01:00:49 Suddenly, again, they will go through a divorce and suddenly their work will no longer be their priority. Whatever it is, things will change. And there are going to be moments when you have to let people go. And if you have the ability, as we talked about before, to fire well and not feel pain

Starting point is 01:01:05 when doing so, it can do so humanely and with empathy. Now you have a system basically that can clean itself. It's like a professional sports team. If you had a professional sports team that wasn't allowed to let go of any player they added to the team, that team would end up in last place every time. Companies are no different. So I would say the most valuable thing about recruiting is first learn how to fire well. And if you can do that, now the pressure is off and you can take a little bit more chance on people you have intuition about that you really like, but maybe they're inexperienced, maybe they're young. And I find those people are often insanely good performers. Yeah, that's been my experience, actually. And I would encourage people to check

Starting point is 01:01:50 out Derek Sivers and how he relates to hiring and firing, which I aspire to be more similar to. But that's a side note. Anything You Want by Derek Sivers, I think, is an excellent book for folks out there. Short read, fast read. Past performance and manager questions, and then we will get back to what came up perhaps 10 minutes ago, the energy audit. In assessing past performance and chatting with past managers, what are some of the best questions that you have landed on. And the reason I ask is that in the US at least, this may be true other places, in my experience, it is very hard to get past employers

Starting point is 01:02:33 to say bad things about an employee for fear of being sued or getting themselves into some type of legal hot water. And I've heard a number of various workarounds like leaving a voicemail, only call me back if they're from a scale of 1 to 10, an 8 or higher, that type of thing, where there's some plausible deniability on the part of the recipient. But aside from perhaps that gambit, which I've never actually used, maybe I should. Ways to accurately assess past performance and weaknesses when having conversations with these managers.

Starting point is 01:03:08 So the big filter is, do you get connected with the person? So I asked the candidate to connect me. And if they're not able to, that's obviously a sign. That's a disqualifier. Once I'm connected with a former manager, I have never had the experience that they're unwilling to share reality with me. And the most indicative question is, would you hire this person again? And if they say yes, why? And they tell me, but they also tell me if they wouldn't, why they wouldn't. And I've had

Starting point is 01:03:36 so many revealing conversations with former managers that while that fear may be out there, the dozens or even hundreds of former managers I've talked to, I've never experienced that fear. And the information they've given me has matched the person who I hired almost one-to-one. So I can't speak to that, Tim. And I know that there is that fear out there, but it's not, I haven't encountered it personally. That's wild. Okay. Yeah. I don't know what to say to that, Tim. And I know that there is that fear out there, but it's not, I haven't encountered it personally. That's wild. Okay. Yeah. I don't know what to say to that. And I think it's because I'm being, I'm asking the candidate to connect me. Okay. Energy audit. Let's talk about that. What is an energy audit? Before we started chatting, I pulled out a few personal references. So if we wanted to, yet again, go back into the game, we could also do that.

Starting point is 01:04:33 But maybe we could start with, just broadly speaking, what an energy audit is. So I have to give credit to Diana Chapman, who I think was a guest on your show a while back. That's where I learned this from. Yeah, she was. And she obviously, Katie Hendricks, were were her teachers and we all have many teachers. But the concept here is that we all feel like we have limited time, but it's actually really not the case. What we have is limited energy. And if we start doing things more that raise our energy, we can actually start doing more and more things. But it's hard to add more energy-inducing things. It's actually much easier to eliminate

Starting point is 01:05:12 energy-reducing activities. So instead of going to your calendar and looking at what you do and seeing where you spend your time on it, where you see where you spend your time and see where you wish you spent your time, this is going and looking at your calendar hour by hour, day by day for one week, two weeks, and marking each hour, whatever you did, whether it was scheduled or not scheduled, just remembering what it is you did, and marking it green, I ended that hour with more energy than I started, or red, I did not end that hour with more energy than I started. And if you do this, you'll start to find trends. And one example may be one-on-ones with people that I don't find competent, or I'm no longer even their manager. Informational interviews

Starting point is 01:05:59 with people who are friends of friends. Internal management meetings that are just not well run. These are very common examples of things that are energy neutral or reducing. And what you want to do then is once you identify these things, you want to eliminate them from your calendar. And there are a few ways to eliminate them. One, you ask yourself,

Starting point is 01:06:20 does this actually even need to happen? If the answer is no, then just stop it. Two, if it needs to happen, do I need to be the one to do it? So going back to your K-1 example, do you really have to be the one to get the K-1s? If not, if you could delegate it, which you likely have delegated all the delegatable ones already, then you delegate it. But then there's a third category. Yes, it needs to happen. Yes, I need to be the one to do it. Oh, K-1s, going out and getting the K-1s. Dang it. Only I can do it. Okay. What would make it exquisite? Ask yourself that question. What would make this actually energy raising? And you might say, let me actually ask you that

Starting point is 01:07:05 in reality, Tim, what would make it energy raising for you when you go and get your K-1s? I mean, I would also like to hear some sort of answers from the crowd or things that you've seen, just like you had these common neutral or depleting categories. I'd be curious to know how other people answer this. I mean, look, I'll give a, I don't mean it to sound flippant, but like if I were sitting in a hot tub drinking a bottle of wine and doing this email, like batching all that shit together, maybe that would make it less repulsive, right? That would be an example.

Starting point is 01:07:42 I'm just pulling that out of the air. Yeah. But I would be very curious to I'm just pulling that out of the air, but I would be very curious to know how other people answer this. Those are the kinds of things they come up with. And of course, accountability partner was the one that I came up with and shared with people. And that usually resonates with people are turning on music. That's really fun. Or again, people, or some kind of create changing the environment to make the environment fun. But let's come back to ones that are more, I'll give examples of each category.

Starting point is 01:08:09 So what things that don't need to happen? You know what? Informational interviews for friends of friends don't need to happen. What do you mean by informational interviews in this case? My buddy has a niece who's just graduating from college and looking for a job, and she's really interested in doing podcasts. Tim, would you please talk to her for 30 minutes and just help her with some direction?

Starting point is 01:08:33 Yeah. Turns out that doesn't need to happen. And you can just learn to say no. And then, of course, you want to say no in a very kind way. And you want to have lists of answers that you keep. So you don't have to keep inventing them each time. You keep them in a Google doc and you copy paste them. And then no would go something like, you know, Sam, I love you to death and I would love to help you. But I realize that I need to focus my time on my priorities, which are the podcast, my family,

Starting point is 01:09:02 et cetera. And my schedule is insanely full because I filled it with focusing on those priorities. And I would go against my own philosophy if I deviated from that. So I have to politely decline. That's an example. Just learn how to say no. And by the way, there will be blowback. People go, oh, are you too famous now? Are you too? Yeah. So you're just going to get that. You just have to live with that. The second delegation you've already done. And then the exquisite, I'll give you real examples of the exquisite. Most people hate internal meetings. Why? Because it's a lot of talking. Nothing ever really gets done. It's super inefficient. And most people say, you know what would make it exquisite? If we had a pre-written agenda that we all agreed on, that there were a meeting owner

Starting point is 01:09:47 who were responsible for curating the topics, making sure we stayed time box, like this is worth 10 minutes, so we only give it 10 minutes. And three, that everybody pre-read and pre-wrote their comments so that once we started the meeting, it had already advanced significantly. We're not starting from scratch on understanding what the issue is and what people's thoughts are around it. We can just like, just go to decision and like the last few minutes of verbal conversation that are needed. And I go, great. Cause, you know, share this with your team, see if they would be energized by the same thing.

Starting point is 01:10:26 You know, they write it down and share it with the team. And so people do, they share it with the team and turns out everyone on the team goes, yeah, that would be amazing. Let's do that. So then they appoint a meeting owner and then they have a written agenda and then they pre-write and pre-read and all of a sudden it goes incredibly well. Things like that. I know I'm shoehorning this in to this example in the broader conversation of energy audit, but nonetheless, are there any shorthand tips or longhand, it's long format after all, you'd like to give for running good meetings? Is there anything that you would like to add to that? Because we were going to eventually wind our way to running effective meetings. We can certainly go there, Tim, but that means we'll have skipped the gameplay

Starting point is 01:11:08 of looking at your calendar. Caught me. We can skip it if you want. I'm not meaning to skip it. I just thought if it made sense to mention those things here, then great. But if we want to just bookmark it and come back to meetings, we can do that. Let me mention here and then let's go back to your calendar. Let's do it. This is one which is, first of all, I believe that good communication is not verbal only,

Starting point is 01:11:34 and good communication is not written only. Really good communication is both written and verbal. What I mean by that is most people are very good at collecting their thoughts and organizing their thoughts in a written fashion, but writing only misses the nuance. So the real nuance comes out when people speak. But if people just speak, if I don't catch every single word, I missed what they said. I certainly can't go back and try to remember what they said because it's not anywhere. I can't find it. So I find that if someone writes up

Starting point is 01:12:05 their thoughts and then shares them verbally, the combination gives me the full picture or as full of the picture as I can possibly get. And to make it even fuller, I then repeat it back and say, is that right? And then once I do, that's really the fullest picture. Because often when I repeat it back, like almost like when I did with you in the beginning and you're like, yeah, kind of. But there's actually this other thing about fame and trust. And so I didn't catch that the first time, but I did once you you said it the second time.

Starting point is 01:12:34 So I have written this all up. The reason I'm saying this is because I've written this all up. So I'm going to share it verbally now. But there's a document on how to have effective and efficient meetings. And so if anyone's interested, they should also read that document because paired with this, it'll be the full picture. And we'll link to that in the show notes so everybody will be able to find it. Okay, great. And pretty much everything we've talked about here, I've written up at some point because I also believe that once I say

Starting point is 01:13:01 something once and it comes up again, I need to write it down so that in the future, I will have this both written and verbal. I want to mention one thing for folks. If you have a blog, if you are consistently giving polite declines, I've actually written blog posts explaining all the rationale for a handful of different polite declines. So there's an entire blog post called Why I'm Not Reading Any New books. And it just explains it because I get a hundred of those a week. And it's like, if you're going to say it more than once, put it down somewhere people can read it. So just wanted to reinforce that. Awesome. I love it. So then in terms of running effective and efficient meetings, I believe there are three types of meetings. Meeting one is all verbal. 99% of

Starting point is 01:13:47 meetings are like this, and they're usually really inefficient, and everyone sort of gets frustrated, and the only people that get to speak are the people who are bolder, and the people who are quieter and more introverted don't even speak, and so we think they don't have anything to say, but it turns out they have a lot to share, And they also don't feel bought in because they don't feel included in the conversations. Second type of meeting, people pre-write. This is where Amazon goes. This is saying, if you want to bring something up in this meeting, you've got to write it out.

Starting point is 01:14:17 And in the beginning of the meeting, we'll all read it and then we'll give our opinions and we'll make a decision. Those are much more effective meetings because now we have real content that can be shared and consumed. And so the conversation is not superficial. The conversation to run your decision is at a much deeper level. And then the most effective meetings is the type three, which is very difficult to get to. And that is people submit in advance their issues, topics in writing, but 24 hours in advance. Then in that last 24 hours, all the meeting participants read and comment on all of that

Starting point is 01:15:00 material so that when the meeting starts, we've now gone one level, two levels down, and the verbal portion is at the third and much deeper level. I now already know what everybody thinks, including the people that are introverted and don't like to speak up during a meeting because they don't think it's that bold. Now I know everybody's thoughts, and now everybody is actually bought in to whatever the decision is because they participated in it. That's level three. The company that does this best is Brax that I know of. And it requires a lot of holding people accountable. And if someone does not enter their issue by, you know, 24 hours before the exec team meeting, they don't get to enter it. And if people have not commented on the issue

Starting point is 01:15:45 by the time the meeting starts, they don't get to comment. It's an extreme version of accountability that drives one time people will miss, but once they miss one time, they are absolutely prepared the next time and from then on. That to me is the quick and dirty version. Yeah, I love quick and dirty. But what percentage, I'm just curious, of meetings get canceled once a document is created and people add all of their comments? Like a precise percentage not needed, but do they still tend to proceed with the meeting and verbal portion of that? Or are there a lot of cases where, you know what, we didn't actually need a meeting. This is resolved to what we needed to resolve. There's always a little bit of synchronous time that's required because again, the writing doesn't

Starting point is 01:16:31 fully satisfy the communication. And so at least Pedro, I don't think Pedro at Brex is canceling exec team meetings because the issues and the comments are so thorough. He's like, got it, got everything I need. Like, I don't need to see you guys anymore. That's not happening. It's let's do the final. I've seen your comments. Now I'd like to hear verbally, you and you and you, please share your verbally. Okay, now I get it. Now I have my decision. Here's my decision. Let me share it with you. Or I'm going to appoint someone else to be the decision maker. But yeah, the synchronous portion is needed to sort of finalize the decision to really make people feel heard. And then there's another portion which cannot be done asynchronously. And that is feedback.

Starting point is 01:17:14 Because it's so dangerous to give feedback asynchronously. Because if I give you what I think is constructive feedback, and you get insulted or feel defensive and I don't see that or I don't hear that, then I can't say, oh, Tim, wait a second. I meant that with love. I didn't mean to make you feel anger. So if I'm not there to catch it, you'll feel anger towards me. And just get resolved. Exactly. And within a few days, because of confirmation bias, you'll have already amassed enough evidence to prove that I'm the devil, that our relationship will be destroyed forever. And so feedback must be done, I believe, in person. And I also think that's a critical component of successful meetings. Give me feedback as manager. Let me give each other

Starting point is 01:18:04 feedback as peers. I mean give each other feedback as peers. I mean, that doesn't even exist in most companies. Rarely do people give feedback to the CEO, but almost never do people give feedback to each other at the team level. So I introduced that. Certainly Brex does, and almost all the companies I coach do.

Starting point is 01:18:22 And that, again, must be done sacredly. I'm thinking out loud here, based on some of the reading and prep I did for this conversation. It also seems, and this is not to negate anything you just said, that Pedro, self-admittedly, does not like to focus on the reading and writing. That's not his superpower, if I'm remembering correctly. So it would maybe also make it more valuable to have the voice component. Or am I misremembering? I think that's Enrique. That was in the Fast Company profile. Enrique. All right, there we go. Corrected. I stand

Starting point is 01:18:56 corrected. Pedro, never mind. Okay, good. Well, I'm glad I just checked that because I think the nature of how people on the team and how the CEO prefer to consume information often informs how these things take shape. So I just wanted to double check. So thank you for that. All right. Should we look at some examples from my calendar? Let's take a representative day, Tim, and let's start first thing in the morning. Representative day is going to be harder than what I have in front of me. Let me tell you what I have, and I'm happy to try to improv jazz the day in the life. What I have is I went through this. I do this typically every year around New Year's, which is a past year review. So I looked at every week for the last two years, actually, and made a positive and negative column looking at broader categories.

Starting point is 01:19:56 So I have that, but we could look at a day or we could look at a week, because I tend to schedule things in a more predictable way on a weekly basis than on some days, which can get squirrely, if that makes any sense. So for instance, I tend to have podcast recordings on Mondays and Fridays, depending on where I am. If it's central time in Austin, then it's usually 10 a.m. and 3 p.m. That's sort of the bracketing. Tuesdays, such as today, also. Today's a bit of an exception where things had to move around because of some unexpected stuff this week. Also, team call day. So I'll have one-on-one calls and a group team call, which is shorter. That's usually about 20 minutes long. And then later in the week, there are other things. But we can approach this in any way that you like. I've got the list from

Starting point is 01:20:50 the last one to two years, categorically speaking. And then we could dive into a week or a day, however you would like. If you already have the list, we don't need to do any more. I'd like you to pick something that is de-energizing, that's stumping you. That's like, man, I don't know how to get this off my calendar. I don't know how to get this out of my, my workday. Well, let me just read the list and then I'll come back to that question because there might be something juicy to chew on that doesn't necessarily fit the answer to the question, but let me give this a shot. Actually, I probably have the answer to your question. Negatives, and this is not a slight to any of my friends in the legal profession, but lawyer time.

Starting point is 01:21:37 I spend a lot of time in email and on phone calls with lawyers of different types. It is remarkable to me, although not that dissimilar from a lot of my friends, just in terms of how complex your life can become from a legal perspective, professionally and personally, as time moves on doing the kinds of things that I'm doing. So I would say lawyer time, generally, I do not find energy additive. It is important. Very often, there are decisions that only I can make within my very small team. That would be one. Another would be traveling alone. For instance, I took a trip this past year to the Azores, which are off of

Starting point is 01:22:21 Portugal. Beautiful place. But having enjoyed traveling to dozens of different countries on my own when I was younger, I find that I experience it as more lonely now than I did then. I think in part because I've had five years of sharing these experiences with my significant other. I'm going to mention a couple of things, and then we can revert probably back to the lawyers. But next was a very loud, loud event or events. My senses are very sensitive. And loud environments, I just find incredibly depleting. Even if the event otherwise has many redeeming qualities,

Starting point is 01:23:03 if it's loud, it just negates everything else. Next one would be- We're going to do all three of those in a minute. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Noise in Austin, honestly. Austin is like the Shanghai of the United States. The construction is never ending. Being surrounded by noise is very problematic for my system. For my dog too, who's kind of my external nervous system, she's grown less tolerant of all of that. Handling admin stuff, decisions related to what I perceive as logistics or admin stuff would be net negative. Investing, generally, I find net negative. Not

Starting point is 01:23:39 always, but predominantly funds, I would say. I find that negative with if capital calls are unpredictable, which makes it challenging at times if you have a lot of commitments to budget for various capital needs and so on. So the investing, which could also fall into the kind of informational interview category on some levels, just lots of email and phone calls, which is why I took a break completely from startup investing in 2015, I guess. And I wrote a blog post so I wouldn't have to repeat myself on why I'm taking a long startup vacation. The last one, net negative, and this is actually related to the traveling alone and other things. And this might not be the conversation within which to unpack this, but it's something I know I'm not alone in experiencing, which is

Starting point is 01:24:31 I've made so many decisions and optimized for a degree of freedom in my life, say on a Wednesday afternoon to be able to spend a half day skiing or whatever it might be. But I find that that has freed me to do these things. But it can be a lonely experience because so few other people actually have engineered or simply had the good luck, the good fortune to be in circumstances in which they can create that freedom. So you can end up feeling very, very lonely in the pursuit or experience of this freedom that you've worked so hard to create. That's a meta issue. You basically created the experience of retirement before you retired. Yeah. Yeah. But all my cohort, none of my cohorts retired. That's right. And I'm still doing the podcast. I'm doing art stuff and I'm doing things I enjoy

Starting point is 01:25:30 that are actually energy positive, right? That's the only reason I've done the podcast this long. Those are some of the energy negatives and lawyer time would fit into almost every week, I would say. Let's just go through them chronologically until we're like, we've done it enough. So let's start with lawyer time and let's just put it through the framework. One, does it actually need to happen? Could you just say, you know what? I'm not doing the lawyers.

Starting point is 01:25:56 We're not getting legal advice. I'm just doing these things. I'm making decisions without legal advice. No. Okay. I mean, I could do it. It would be very, it would be a very bad idea. So I would say, No. Okay. I mean, I could do it. It would be very, it would be a very bad idea. So I would say, yeah. Okay. We can also look at the activities that are leading to requiring

Starting point is 01:26:13 legal advice. Yeah, sure. The precursors. Yeah. Are there any of those activities which you don't need to do? Like you stopped investing personally. I stopped investing personally a long time ago. Yep. That would remove that category of law, right? Because I have lawyers for investments. I have lawyers for liability reasons, exposure. I have IP lawyers. There are many different categories, right? So even removing some of those categories would be valuable. So if I stopped all investing that required document review and deal structure review, then that would remove that entire component. However, the deal review stuff is probably the least time consuming of the categories that I have. Okay. But that doesn't then require capital calls as well? Only if they're funds. So if funds require a lot more than one-off deals,

Starting point is 01:27:08 because you have subscription documents, you have capital calls, you have sort of ongoing obligations and a degree of unpredictability, which of course you sometimes get rewarded for. So I want to make it clear. So that's a cash management issue. So let's come back to the law. So we stand through the activities and the ones that are really onerous are actually not the ones that you would be willing to stop. So the ones that you'd be willing to stop is investing, but that's ordeal structure, but that's actually not onerous for you. You don't mind that legal time. That's not the most time consuming. Yeah. Yeah. It's the other stuff. Let's get specific here.

Starting point is 01:27:46 Which is of the legal work, which is the most time consuming and energy reducing? I would say dealing with liability, state, corporate structuring stuff. That would be very high on the list of things that are necessary. I think largely necessary, but not energy giving. Related to what activity? The podcast or something else? No, that's just life in general. I mean, if there's a new book, it's within a new company for limited liability. And so it's like, imagine being a film producer. It's like every film is a new thing. It's a new LLC or limited partnership or whatever they happen to use in film.

Starting point is 01:28:28 So it's that and the complexity that that entails. Although maybe a better example to work with, just because the former could get really complicated, is intellectual property and management of intellectual property. So all of the books, the podcast, that type of stuff, I would say. And that may be a more fruitful place to focus because that's ongoing. And there are also elective things that I do that I definitely don't have to do to survive that create more of this work. Got it. So it's elective that you write the books, it's elective that you create the podcast, but it's also elective that you file the trademarks and that you file the copyrights.

Starting point is 01:29:13 Totally. Yep. Okay. So this is really about trademarks, filing trademarks. I mean, some of it's trademarks and enforcement of trademarks. Some of it is that. Then if somebody, for instance, and I'm glad I did this, there's a great documentary called The Alpinist or Alpinist. I think it's Alpinist, which I actually highly recommend to folks. They did an amazing job and they wanted to use some audio from the podcast for the movie. I didn't know it would be in the opening sequence, which was quite cool. And there was a lot of back and forth on the release and the

Starting point is 01:29:46 verbiage and indemnity and A, B, C, D, E, F, and G for that. And I'll take the blame for that. I mean, I think they sent something which probably many other people simply signed, but there was a lot of review on my side. Very happy I did it, but that took up a good amount of time. Okay. That's a great example, Tim. So in your mind, it has to happen. And in your mind, you have to have that back and forth. I don't want to interrupt, but yes, I would say there are many things that I almost certainly erroneously believe I have to do. And this would be one where coming back to the hypervigilance piece, right? The fear of downside risk leads me to feel like in order to protect myself, we do need to have this back and forth. Okay, great. But I'm going to challenge that assumption right there.

Starting point is 01:30:45 I've written a book. I've actually made a movie shortlisted for an Academy Award. I get requests for clips. I get requests for translate my book into this language in this country. And Tim, I just say yes. There's no back and forth. There's no legal document. I just go, great, go for it.

Starting point is 01:31:02 Now, your books may be more widely distributed and your podcast much more. So you may want some interaction therefore, but there actually is an option for you to simply not do the legal work around this. So let me challenge you. Would you be open to no longer doing legal work around this? If someone wanted a clip for the opening of a documentary, you just say yes. So I don't want to speak for these guys. I believe that is actually what I started with. And then the response was, in order to use it, we need you to sign this document. I think that is how it came about. I might be misremembering that, but I believe I said, look, I don't want to deal with any legal stuff, but if you want to use it, go ahead and use it. I believe that's actually where I started. And then would you be willing to just sign whatever they send over?

Starting point is 01:31:43 If I'm being honest right now, I think the answer is probably no. Maybe I just need more therapy. I'm not going to push you there. And you can also do, listen, if I have to sign something, then the answer is no, I'm not going to sign it. So you can take it, you can use it or not. So that's one possibility. The other possibility is, could someone else do this for you? And simply, when it's all done, say, Tim, I've looked at this. It's worth signing. Yeah, there certainly is the possibility for that. I do that with a lot of stuff currently. So I have people send some PDF, and the process is it's sent to whichever legal team is responsible for that stuff. And then once it gets into shape where my legal folks have vetted it, it's converted into

Starting point is 01:32:31 HelloSign or whatever it's called now. I think it's owned by Dropbox. And then I go in and I sign it. So there's a chance also that I am exaggerating how much of this I do. The perception that I have is that I spend a lot of time on this, but maybe it's just because I see these emails and I'm just like, ah, fucking logistics to deal with. And I blow it out of proportion and maybe I'm handling it a lot better than I perceive myself to be handling it. There's that distinct possibility too. There's certainly that because it annoys you to see it and then it goes on. And therefore your perception, of course, you are sensitized. So pain, we notice much more intensely than joy or pleasure. Time flies when you're having fun is literally like disappears, but you sense every second when you're not having

Starting point is 01:33:23 fun. So we're not going to stop just because it's time-wise it's short. We're going to get rid of the fact that it's not fun. And I feel obligated to say the lawyers I work with now, I really, really like. They do excellent work. I tend to feel energy negative when I am not creating something that is harnessing my combination of abilities that I think I most have to offer of highest value. So if I'm not working on writing or the podcast or some creative project, I'm like, I'm not the best at reviewing legal documents. I'm not the best at emailing about legal processes. Therefore, I get angsty. Yes. And you also mentioned all these admin things that you uniquely can do. emailing about legal processes. Therefore, I get angsty.

Starting point is 01:34:09 Yes. Yes. And you also mentioned all these admin things that you uniquely can do. And one of the reasons is because you uniquely have a way of making decisions and that you need to decide whether you're comfortable with the risk in this legal document. And only you can decide that because only you know how you think. But it's actually not true. You actually could train someone to think like you think. And it's actually not that hard. The way you do it is, so we're going to skip into assuming

Starting point is 01:34:39 you can't get rid of the stuff, only you can do it. What would make it exquisite? I'm going to give you a thought. What might make it exquisite? I'm going to give you a thought. What might make it exquisite is if you could train someone to think like you think, and then they could interact with the lawyers, and they could assess the risk, and they could make a decision, and they could even, you could give them authority to sign, they could even sign on your behalf. Would that make this exquisite if you could have something like that? Someone like

Starting point is 01:35:05 that? Sure, it would. Yes. It's actually quite easy. It turns out that very effective learning happens the following way. I watch you do something over and over and over until I think, you know what? I think I could do that. Then I say, Tim, hey, let me try it the next time. Then I do it and you watch me do it and you give me feedback until, and I do it over and over with you to give me feedback until I'm doing it just right. And now you have full trust that I actually do it right. And then the third thing is I then teach it to somebody else because in the act of teaching and helps you to clarify what I'm really doing, that is the most effective learning model that I know. And it turns out you can do that with an assistant.

Starting point is 01:35:50 You can have someone to sit and simply watch you. Now, they're going to need access to your email. They're going to need to sit in on all your meetings. They can be off to the side. I have someone sitting to my side right now for this entire time. And they will simply watch everything that you do. And it usually takes about three months of just watching before they really start to make correlations of the information coming in and your decisions going out. And they start to make

Starting point is 01:36:16 correlations between the two. After about three months, they'll start to say, hey, let me do these low-level tasks. And you let them, and then you give them feedback on it. And they're never perfect the first time they do them, but they're at 80%. And then they get to 90 and finally 100. And it gets to the point where they can do the tasks as well as you can. And a really good test is you'll write down a question

Starting point is 01:36:37 and both of you write down your answers. And then you copy and paste. And then you read each other's answers. And when your answers are almost identical, then you know this person thinks like you. And at that point, they can start doing these actions for you. By the way, this is also a very good technique I found when I have a disagreement with somebody and we're just not seeing each other. I then do this. I write down the question. We both write down the answer and look at it because what we mean disagreement with someone internally on your team.

Starting point is 01:37:07 Yes. Yes. Okay. Got it. Because could you give an example just to concretize that could be anything we should hire more coaches. We should not hire more coaches. We should, but that's an example.

Starting point is 01:37:19 And when I then said, okay, let's answer the question. What I find out in writing, and then both read it, what I find out is that our similarities are actually 98%. Our differences are 2%. But what we always, in a conversation, unfortunately, each person focuses on the 2%. And so it looks like we don't agree. Where in reality, we actually do agree, mostly, except for this very small thing. But that's a little side note. So coming back to the assistant, basically the super assistant, I have required this

Starting point is 01:37:53 of everybody that I coach. And the reason I require it, it's a very pragmatic reason, is because I'm teaching a system. And by the third meeting, the CEO has learned whether or not the system makes them perform better in life. And it almost always does. And then they want to use that system with their team. But almost everyone I coach is a founder type, meaning they're not a process person. They love to solve problems, but they don't love to follow checklists. And mine is a checklist.

Starting point is 01:38:21 So then they say, this is great. I want to implement my team. But can you please teach someone else to do it? Because I don't want to have to be the one to do this. And I go, no, you should have had that person here from the very beginning. And so now I have people observing in all of my coaching meetings so that they do learn the process and they can implement it with the CEO's reports. I think almost all of my CEOs have what we call a chief of staff, and that may be a bad name because it's too big of a title. This is really a super assistant, not a chief executive anything. And that's it. And it's worked insanely well, so well, in fact,

Starting point is 01:38:57 that many of these chief of staffs have then gone on to run whole departments in these companies. They run people, they run marketing, whatever department is failing. And the success rate of them running departments has been close to 100%. Whereas the success rate of new executives hired to run departments who are much more senior, much more experienced is about 50%. So now what we've done is we said, wait, the only difference is you got this young chief of staff who spent six months shadowing the CEO and now is performing perfectly as a chief people officer, or you've got this much more experienced chief people officer who comes in and half the time doesn't work out. What's the difference? The difference is the shadowing. This executive from the outside didn't shadow the person

Starting point is 01:39:45 who was running people beforehand. And so they were forced to make decisions way before they knew the lay of the land of this new company. So now what we're doing is we're having new executives come in, shadowing for 30 days, 60 days, the CEO,

Starting point is 01:40:01 shadowing the person they're replacing in their head of department role. And the success rates have now shot through the roof to also close to 100%. So the shadowing concept is insanely effective. And that's what I would offer to you. You already have an assistant. If you'd be willing to have her actually shadow you physically, I believe that within three months, you would have, and certainly within six months, you would have someone that could do this, that you would trust to do this for you and make the same decisions you would make. Related to the shadowing, are there any other fine-tuning notes or format notes related to the shadowing. So is there a discussion after,

Starting point is 01:40:47 for instance, someone shadows you in a meeting? Is there some type of note-taking on the part of the super assistant? Are there any other details that you think are very helpful when one is considering doing something like this? There's the EA considering or you considering. there's a whole list of best practices for the EA, for the chief of staff, which I'll share with you. So you include in the podcast notes and people can read through those. Those are all written by my former chief of staff and Regina, Regina. Yes. She was amazing. But the biggest thing is what I found is the biggest danger is that people take on this role as a stepping stone and they really want to do something bigger. So I've now found actually EAs are actually kind of the best people for this role because they will continue on in this role.

Starting point is 01:41:38 If you get some like, you know, the ex McKinsey consultant who comes in, they'll do it for six months. But within six months, they now want to go run something, something big. Yeah. And so they tend to want to leave. Whereas the EA will do this for year after year, after year, after year. And because an EA wants to support. And so I think you've already cracked the first most important piece of advice. The next is, yes, the EA will want your feedback constantly so that she can perform better. But the whole point of this is to make this costless for you, have no cost. And it's no cost if you don't have to constantly answer questions. So yes, it'll take them a little longer to get the information if they observe only. Right, with the shadowing.

Starting point is 01:42:31 That's right. It will be zero cost for you. So therefore, I recommend that you focus on what's good for you, not what's good for the assistant. Now, I have to imagine that you have many clients. Well, if it's a prereq, of course, all your clients or close to all of your clients have a super assistant or chief of staff.

Starting point is 01:42:48 And some are better at making things costless for themselves. Some are better at really making good use, for instance, of a super assistant. What are some of the best practices you have observed or common mistakes on the opposite end of the spectrum? The best practices I think are giving full and total access saying you are going to spend 12 hours per day with me in person because in person just frankly does work better than remote. And because of the remote, you've got a screen share and then it's just a lot of stuff like it's 70% bandwidth, not 100% bandwidth. And another thing is you got to really like this person. So if you're going to spend 12

Starting point is 01:43:36 hours a day in person with them, that's the number one criteria. This does not require extreme experience or competence. This requires you like the person, period. There really isn't much that you need to do in terms of having people making sure they understand because if they see the same information that you see, that's all they need. And if they see the decisions you make and the actions you take, that's all they need.

Starting point is 01:44:02 Eventually, when you want to make sure you don't skip the step of reverse shadowing, so they shadow you for a while, eventually they're going to be like, Tim, I can do that. You don't have to assign them anything. After a while, they're going to get so freaking bored just watching you all day long. They're going to be dying to do stuff. So they'll start taking things off your plate. And then as they do, check out what they do. This is the reverse shadow and give them a little bit of feedback on how it could be done even better until it's being done perfectly. And that's it. So don't skip the reverse shadow spot, but don't worry about assigning them things.

Starting point is 01:44:41 They'll assign themselves. So this is going to be a hard left, but I'm going to ask anyway, because I'm super curious. So the documentary film that you referred to earlier, I believe is Favela Rising, if I'm getting that right. And then there's a line in this profile. He made one more documentary and he was done. Why did you stop making documentaries? It was a lot of work. And yes, it was fun, but I had already had so much fun. And I told myself, I'll make another film when my kids want to make a movie and I'll help them make that movie. But for me, it had become more work. And at that point also in my life, I had had so much fun that I didn't want to have any more fun.

Starting point is 01:45:26 It had become kind of empty for me. Now, what type of fun? What do you mean by that? Oh, you name it. Any type of fun you can imagine I've had. And a lot of. Okay. Because that was my job, frankly.

Starting point is 01:45:38 My first job in life was to make money. And then I did. And then I made enough money that I never had to make money again. And then I thought, okay, well, now I'm just going to go have fun. And it was my job. And it was my job for one, two, three, four, five years. And I'd had so much, I mean, that's my sole focus. I had so much fun. It was just like, all right, enough. And then I thought, well, gosh, what do I do now? And then the only thing I could come up with was, well, I guess do good. I don't know.

Starting point is 01:46:07 There are people who do that and they seem to think that that's really satisfying. And then I thought to myself, well, yeah, but if I do good, I don't want to just like write a check to charity. That doesn't feel right. I want to do something that other people are afraid to do. I want to do the hard stuff. And I don't know why I thought that thought, but I did. And so I thought, well, the thing that people are really afraid of is they're afraid of

Starting point is 01:46:30 violent criminals. Cause I thought I'm afraid of them too. And my guess is nobody's helping them. And so plenty of people are helping kids with disabilities or poor people in Africa, but no one's having violent criminals in the United States. And so I said, it doesn't sound like fun, but if I really want to get my hands dirty and be in a place that other people aren't and help where other people aren't, that's a place to look. So I went there. And also in the making of these two movies, Favela Rising was about the drug war in the slums of Rio. So it put me in the poorest slums, frankly, in South America, in Rio de Janeiro. And I realized that there are no schools there. So if you want to eat, you want to get a job, basically the best job you can get is to join the drug gang.

Starting point is 01:47:18 So it wasn't the worst kids that were joining the drug gang. It was the best kids that were joining the drug gang. And then I came back to the United States and the second film I made was a movie called The Gloves. It was about amateur heavyweight boxing and the best amateur heavyweights in the world. And they collect in the South Bronx to compete against each other. And so I spent time in the South Bronx, which is arguably one of the worst ghettos in the United States. And I went there and there are schools here, but they're so bad. They might as well not exist. So once again, the same dynamic is going on. You want to get a job and eat, you join the drug gang. And as again, the best kids were joining, not the worst. And I realized, oh my God,

Starting point is 01:47:57 is it possible that criminal behavior in the United States is actually rational. Like this is rational behavior to the circumstance that I'm find myself in. And I thought, whoa, I've got to find out. And the only way I know is to take someone who is already incarcerated, who's getting out of jail or prison and say, can I, you know, like a little Eliza Doolittle, my fair lady experiment, say, can I have this person get them to get and keep a legitimate job and no longer revert back to that behavior? So I thought, oh, this is not going to be fun, but I'm going to try. And so I went to Rikers and I asked them, there's like a halfway house in Manhattan for folks who've gotten out of Rikers. And I asked them for like, for their

Starting point is 01:48:42 hardest case. And they just laughed and they just said, they're all hard. And then so I got assigned a guy. And this guy was a known killer, six foot two, prison tattoos, black guy. And I would meet him at the halfway house, but he didn't have a cell phone and he was homeless. And so after I met him one time there, I got there and I didn't know if he was going to show up or not. And I realized, wait a second, I can be here for hours and hours and hours and I'll never know. It's like, that doesn't work. So I said, from now on, you're coming to my place. And I had this floor of a building in Manhattan. Half of it was my residence, half of it was my office. So I had him come there the next time and he showed up. And as soon as he showed up, I realized, oh my God, what have I done? I've just brought in a known killer into 30 feet away from where my wife is. What the hell have I done? But at the end of the first day, he went back out and not a penny was missing. And I had like hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of equipment. And I felt completely safe with this guy because what I realized is there are plenty of people that he can steal from,

Starting point is 01:49:48 but I'm the only person that's reached out to help him. So why the hell would he do anything negative to me? And he didn't, he never did. And it was pretty damn easy to help him because what I realized pretty quickly, and he would come each day, and I realized there were three things that made me not want to hire him. One, he looked like a thug. Two, he talked like a thug. And three, he acted like a thug. So I figured if I could get him to look like a not-thug, talk like a not-thug, and act like a not-thug, then he would be employable. And so to look like a not-thug, we went to—I'm making this a little bit long.

Starting point is 01:50:24 I apologize. But I took him to Goodwill, and for like 80 bucks, we bought him a complete week's worth of collared shirts and khaki pants and belts and socks and shoes. And he looked like a preppy guy. And then for talking, it turns out there were basically five or six phrases that were non-grammatical. Like, I done did this. I be chilling. Can I ask you a question? And I said to him, do you want to speak like me? And he said, yes. I said, okay. So each time he said one of those phrases, I would just write down what he said. Then I'd write down what the grammatically correct phrase is. It turns out he's a native English speaker. So it's super easy for him to learn it. And within three days, he was speaking like this, like I'm speaking. And frankly, the only guys I've known, African Americans I know that speak like this tone were my two roommates at Yale. So I have this reverse

Starting point is 01:51:16 bias that if an African American guy speaks like this, I think he went to an Ivy League school. And I'm not the only one who thinks that. And so then third thing was act like an on-tug. And I just shared him how to say, excuse me, please, and thank you. And hold doors open for people and walking down the sidewalk. And when someone's coming in the same path, just step to the side.

Starting point is 01:51:37 So we started doing that. And remember, we went to practice it. We went to a deli and he ordered a sandwich. And he said, excuse me, can I please have a roast beef sandwich? And I made it, gave him a sandwich. And my guy I'm working with said, thank you. And afterwards, we went up, ate our lunch. As we're eating, he said, Matt, and the guy behind the deli counter was super nice and super friendly. He said, Matt, that's the first time in Manhattan anyone has ever smiled at me. He didn't have that experience because people were afraid of him.

Starting point is 01:52:09 They looked at him and they saw a thug. So they were afraid. And now he had a way of making them not afraid. Anyway, so I get emotional. And so with all that, we sent him out to get a job. And first interview, boom, gets the job. Super happy. Amazing.

Starting point is 01:52:25 Because again, the people he's competing against, it was like a overnight stock boy at a warehouse or something. They're not dressed like he is, talking like he is, acting like he is. They're kind of like, they're not polished and he's acting polished. And so he gets the job. Two weeks later, he calls me back and says,

Starting point is 01:52:40 Matt, I gotta let go. Like, whoa, why? So while the background check came back and they saw my criminal activity. I go, okay, let's start again. So we did another interview. He got, he got the next job, boom, like that. Same thing. Two weeks later, background check came back. They let him go. This happened seven times. Then we realized, you know what? This isn't working. Everyone does a background check. It's always going to show your history. You're never going to keep a job where they don't allow history. So now we have

Starting point is 01:53:05 to find jobs where a criminal history is okay. And doing research, we found that there's basically, it requires that there be such desperation on the part of the employer that they'll hire anybody who's got the skill. And it turns out there's three categories we found like that. One is construction, the other is truck driving, and the third is farm work. Well, we were in the city, so farm work didn't count. Construction is interesting, but it requires very physical, hands-on teaching. So it's not scalable. It's an apprenticeship thing. So it's almost like you get hired by your uncle and this guy didn't have an uncle in the construction trade. So the last one was truck driving. It turns out truck driving, there's schools out there and they cost about anywhere between two and $4,000. And the hardest part is

Starting point is 01:53:48 passing the written permit exam. But once you do that and get behind the truck is very physical. And this guy is physical and he was able to learn it. So we sent him to truck driving school and 60 days later, he had a job as a truck driver and making 60,000 a year. Now it's what, 14 years later, and he's married, three kids, and he's doing great. I now replicated that with, I used to do that with like three, four or five people a year. And it was really fun. I really enjoyed it. And one day about four or five years ago, a friend of mine came along and he discovered what I was doing. He said, oh my God, Matt, you've got to make this national.

Starting point is 01:54:27 I said, no, I don't. He said, yeah, it's your obligation. This is like, this is the most effective thing out there. So I said, I'll tell you what, I'll do it if you do it with me. Like you will have board meetings every two months and you show up to it

Starting point is 01:54:38 and then I get to hang out with you. So he said, okay. So we hired a guy named Jason Wang who himself been incarcerated for many years. Amazing guy. And he now runs it. And I think this year I'll probably put a thousand felons in drug jobs. And they've of the hundreds that they put there. So that Jason's put there so far, I think the recidivism rate is like 1%. It's insanely low because it turns out that criminality is an economic problem.

Starting point is 01:55:06 If you don't have enough money to buy food, it turns out you still have to eat and you'll resort to illegitimate activity in order to eat. But if people get a legitimate job that turns out their problem of eating goes away and they no longer have to resort to criminal activity, it's not like they're committing crimes because they want to. They're committing crimes because they feel they have to. That's it. The organization is called Free World and it's growing quickly. I think it's in dozens of states now and doing well. I am really glad that you've opened up and shared all of that. And I imagine a lot of people listening will have had an emotional reaction to that in some way or another. I imagine many of them were paying very, very close attention.

Starting point is 01:55:52 And I would love to ask you a follow-up, which is, I'll do this by way of sharing a story about a friend of mine. Who's sort of a, not a prototype, but an example of conversations I've had many times with founders. They start a company, maybe it does well, maybe it doesn't, but at some point along the line, they have ceased to have the need to make more money, really. They'll figure out a way to spend more money if they have more money, plausibly, right? But they don't really need more money. And what I hear often is, man, I am done with startups. No more startups. I'm going to make a woodworking shop and I'm going to have a small group of people who help me with art projects and this, this, and this,

Starting point is 01:56:35 and fuck startups. What a massive amount of headache. I'm never doing that again. Now, the reason I'm bringing this up is looking at you, watching you tell this story, and there's so much deep emotion. And I have to imagine there's a lot of gratification, I must imagine, that it's very rewarding and meaningful to you. It seems like you are building another startup. And I just have to wonder, not to say that it's not something you should do, but I wonder, I would love to hear why, given all the things that you could spend time on. You're right.

Starting point is 01:57:10 It was a startup, but remember, I kept it small. I kept it three or four or five guys a year, which I could do very easily through like text and phone calls. And to make it big, I didn't want to take that on. So I hired someone to do it. And then I coach him. And we meet once a month.

Starting point is 01:57:27 And I coach him just like I coach anyone else of a big tech startup. I'm not running those startups. And I would say the reason I came back to coaching, frankly, was because I did say, I'm not doing any more startups myself. I don't need the money, like you said. And it's just a lot of work. But I then realized there was some part of it that I actually did miss. I missed the conversations. I miss the strategizing. I miss the feeling like things I did had a slightly wider impact in the world than just my home. And I thought to myself, how can I get

Starting point is 01:58:08 the good without the bad? The bad being having to do all the work. I realized, wait a second, if I coach, then I can be in all the conversations, but I don't actually have to do the work. And so that was actually an impetus for me starting coaching. And it turned out to be even better than I thought. I literally get to feel like I'm part of the creation of Chad GPT and I didn't have to do any work. I just sit and coach Sam Altman back in the day at OpenAI. So I think it is sort of having my cake and eating it too. But it also allows me to do this effort

Starting point is 01:58:41 with training truck drivers. And there's also an effort in Kauai where we've built a vocational school for construction skills. As I mentioned, that's one of the other categories and for free to the students. And it's working. And it's for the local Hawaiians, and it's working incredibly well. But again, there, I'm not running it. I'm coaching the guy who is running it. And that, to me, allows me to feel like I've got my hands in many pieces without actually taking on the burden. And it reminds me of a time I once went to a friend's ranch in South Texas, and he brings, there's a pond, and he brings out shotguns. There's doves that fly overhead,

Starting point is 01:59:17 and we're supposed to shoot the doves, or the, I don't even know what they were, birds. I didn't hit a damn thing. And it was getting pretty frustrating. And there was a guy on the other side I could see, he was clearly the best shot. And so what I did was I just walked around the pond and I stood next to that guy. And then when the birds came over, we would both shoot at the same time, the bird would be hit and would go down. It was unclear who actually hit the bird. So in my mind, I could imagine that it might've been me, which of course we all know it wasn't, but then it became much more satisfying. And so that's what I feel like when I coach. Like, obviously it's the CEO who's doing this, but I get to, in some small way,

Starting point is 01:59:54 imagine that maybe I actually had some impact too. What rules or guide rails do you have for yourself in your current business? And the reason I ask is that in profiles and so on, they've mentioned annual recurring revenue and profit margins and growth rates and so on and so forth. And not to say that you fall into this category, but to quote, I think it's AA, if you don't want to slip, don't go where it's slippery.

Starting point is 02:00:22 And people who have had a good track record of making money, sometimes when they get a hit of that dope again, they fall back into old habits, get pulled back into operational roles, et cetera. So what rules or guide rails have you set for yourself in terms of what you will do, what you won't do? I'd love to know how you think about that. So what I did was when I first started coaching, in the beginning I invested, but when I looked back over the first 20 people I coached, and I saw, where's there any friction that's occurred here? And I noticed there were two people that was friction, and both of it was around equity. And one was, hey, Matt, he wanted

Starting point is 02:01:00 to do another round, and the company, frankly, wasn't performing. And he said, Matt, you got to lead the round. I was like, no, I don't. He said, but if you don't lead it, then no one else will, because they know that it's a negative signal. Exactly. It was, I realized, oh no, I got to stop this entirely. So then I just went with this policy, like no cash, no equity, no investing, no nothing. I am doing this for free. That's it. And what I quickly realized also was that would force me to only interact with people that I love and do things that I love because it would be pure insanity for me to do anything that I didn't love when I was doing it for free. And I did that for many, many years until I knew exactly who I loved and what I loved. And there was no more question about that.

Starting point is 02:01:46 Now, recently, a bunch of the CEOs that I coach have said to me, Matt, within the past two years, three years, Matt, your system is amazing. I'd like to use it with my entire company, but I don't want to have to play your role, Matt. I don't have to teach each person how to do it because it's all in a Google doc. I teach people.

Starting point is 02:02:02 Can you please make software that just makes it plug and play? Brian Armstrong was the first person to ask me this. And I was like, Brian, you're an engineer and you've got at the time, 500 engineers on staff. Now he's probably got two or 3000. I was like, I'm not an engineer and I don't have any engineers on staff. Why don't you go build it? He's like, no, Matt, I got to stay doing crypto and I can't deviate. And so I was like, well, I'm not doing it. And then Steve Huffman from Reddit asked me the same thing.

Starting point is 02:02:28 And then the next person and the next person. And finally, after about a while ago, it's about two years ago, I said, OK, I'll do this. But then you're all going to have to participate because I'm not going to go into my pocket to pay developers to build software so that you guys can have it. You know, you guys have to now pay your fair share of the developers. So now people pay and it all goes to developers. I don't take a penny because I still want to maintain the, I'm not getting any cash out of this because I want to stay pure to what's really joyful and that I love. That's how I do it. That's how I not get sucked in again. Although you could argue

Starting point is 02:03:05 that I've gotten sucked into the software company. Yeah. So if you got sucked in and there was complexity creep and all of a sudden you woke up one day and you're like, fuck, what would your extrication plan look like? It would be one of two things. It would be, hey team, I'm shutting this down. Or, hey team, I'm no longer doing this. Would one of you like to take over? That would be it. I'd like to ask you just a few more questions and then we can wind to any closing comments or requests of my audience you might have. We talked about fear and anger at the very beginning of this conversation. And I've read that your trigger emotion or one of them is anger. So what role has anger played in your life and what have been effective tools or approaches for down-regulating when need be? I think it could be very valuable

Starting point is 02:04:01 to me to hear this and I'm sure to many other people. And I've read, for instance, I think this is from Regina, where she discusses times when she's open. She has the ability to say, Matt, I perceive you to be in anger, and then you stop talking, you sit there, but you don't say anything until you've shifted out of that anger. But the mechanism by which you shift out of anger is so far invisible to me. So I'd love to hear anything you have to say about all that. Yeah, the shifting out of anger often is just time. Just as time goes by, I start to realize, whoa, I don't need to be this angry. Two, breathing, breath work seems to calm the nervous system. Exercise clearly does. Heat like sauna or anything heating up the core. Frankly, drinking

Starting point is 02:04:54 hot tea heats the core as well. Anything that chemically alters my brain state, simply getting up and going to a different physical space, walking into another room, all these things change my perception of the world. And so having someone outside of me who says, hey, you're in anger, that's fantastic and a good hack, but it's not 100%. And it's not foolproof. And the problem with anger is that the people who experience my anger the most are the people who are around me the most. They're the people who I love the most. They're my co-workers and they're my family. And so what I found was, is that, and they would tell me this, my family tells me this too, and I'll catch myself. But there's a moment in there where they may feel too much fear to even mention it to me. They may go into freeze themselves. And then I've already acted in anger and then they feel extreme pain.

Starting point is 02:05:58 And so, Tim, you've been transparent with me. I'll be transparent with you. I am also recently out of a relationship, but mine was an 18-year marriage with three children and it ended because of my anger. And my wife had expressed me many, many times, zero anger, Matt, zero. You can't act in anger at me at all. And I got to the point where I could mute myself and catch myself or have her catch me and shift out of it quite quickly. But there was a moment of something that happened and I acted in anger. And she said, that's it. And for many years, she'd been trying to share with me that it's zero,

Starting point is 02:06:37 that can't even start. But I didn't think that was possible. I didn't think that you could not go to anger ever. That seemed unrealistic to me. So I didn't try to find out about that because it seemed like a myth. And the day after she shared this with me, I'm surrounded by coaches. So I happen to be talking to a coach, world-class. And he shared with me, he said, Matt, anger is not a base emotion. Anger is a cover for pain because it's so painful that the brain doesn't want to experience it. So it takes it and shoves it outward as anger. But all you're doing is taking your own pain and shoving it on the people around you. So he said, I want you

Starting point is 02:07:16 right now to think of what is causing you pain. What about that situation that you got angry about is causing you pain and just share it with me. So I started to think about it and started to share. And all of a sudden words came out and all of a sudden tears started to come out and it was so painful. And I realized, oh my God, I've never felt this before. I've never actually felt pain before until now. And immediately I didn't feel anger. Now, it sucked. I hated feeling the pain, but I stayed in it. And that was six, seven months ago. And I have purposely not numbed myself in any way. No drugs, no alcohol, no comfort foods even. I've lost 50 pounds in the last six months because I'm eating so cleanly.

Starting point is 02:07:58 And the result has been I've sat in that pain. And Tim, I have not experienced anger. I don't think in that whole time. So you want the real answer? Allow yourself to feel pain. This is important for me to hear. How do you do that? I mean, this might sound like a dumb question, but I don't think it's going to sound dumb to you because it sounds like you and I have perhaps a very similar experience. So if someone had said, just allow yourself to feel the pain, I wouldn't even know what that means. Like physical pain, sure. But to make that shift, how do you do that? Well, let's go back. Let's pick a real example. So we can even pick an example. I'll let you pick the example. Where's a place example but seeing that piece this morning honestly that media piece

Starting point is 02:08:46 I've developed generally pretty thick skin with that stuff I think what bothered me well one of the aspects that bothered me and then we can keep going is that the piece was actually very well written so it was like this is laziness

Starting point is 02:09:02 and sort of unfair because this person has the chops. They actually know how to write. And whereas if it's just a shitty piece from start to finish, I'm like, eh, whatever. Take the bad with the good. So it goes. So I think that example is the most present for me right now. Just the easiest one. So now we experience things at three different levels.

Starting point is 02:09:28 We experience things as physical sensations, as emotions, and as thoughts. So when you think about what hurts you about this, because there is pain here that you're experiencing, where in your physical body do you experience a sensation? I would say that I experience it in my throat, which is very common. Sort of lower half of my throat and then a bit in the chest and probably also like prefrontal skull. I want you to imagine yourself breathing into those areas. So pick one and breathe into that area. So it's just causing you to focus on that physical area and that physical sensation. And I want you to then think of the pain that this

Starting point is 02:10:21 experience causes you. And I want you to share with me the thoughts that occur as you focus on that physical sensation and think about the pain and the hurt, this unfairness, this injustice, this exposing of you in a way that isn't even true in your mind. How does that hurt? Why does that hurt? Yeah, I would say it hurts because, you know, in some respects, stoicism has, I think, saved my life, literally, in combination with other tools. And so it became a very valuable lifeboat of sorts at times of feeling lost or finding myself in dark places. And so I made a very deliberate decision to try to share Stoicism, Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, etc., starting in the early 2000s, and then bought the audio rights to The Obstacle is the Way by Ryan Holiday,

Starting point is 02:11:27 which was sort of his biggest hit that also put Stoicism on the map for a lot of people, including high performers, which then sort of created this self-propagating cycle, which then I think helped open Stoicism up to the mainstream. So he deserves, of course, a huge amount of credit to make this ancient philosophy, perhaps one of the most unsexy of things in the modern world, take a toehold in a way that I think has helped, not to take full credit, but maybe partial credit in driving that relentlessly for years, where it's helped so many people and saved lives. I mean, legitimately, people who are suicidal have emailed me.

Starting point is 02:12:12 I feel very attached to that. I feel very proud of that. I think Ryan should as well. So when someone is clearly smart, but lazy, or maybe just deliberately misrepresenting how things happened. It's very hurtful. It's very upsetting to me. I think in part because it's such an important tool that if someone casually minimizes it as something for tech bros who have too much money and are looking for some excuse to enjoy their excess. I'm just like, no, that's completely wrong. Not only is it wrong, but I know you know it's wrong. I take it very personally, and I'm not proud of taking it personally. And I'm, once again, aware of the irony of talking about stoicism while talking about feeling hurt by words on a screen,

Starting point is 02:13:03 which is also, I hope, reassuring to people on some level, because ecstasism is a practice. It is not an ever-present, non-fluctuating state. It is a set of practices. So this is an opportunity to practice. But I would say unpacking that partially, at least to the extent that I can put words to it, explain the pain, the hurt. So here's what I'm hearing. Matt, stoicism literally saved my life. And I wanted to share with others because I figured that I wasn't alone. And you know what? I have shared it. And I've heard from people, from many others, that it's also massively improved, if not saved their lives. And there are thousands and thousands more that's also massively improved, if not saved their lives. And there

Starting point is 02:13:45 are thousands and thousands more that as this expands out, will continue to experience this, and it will likely save their lives or at least improve their lives. And this article made light of all that and made it sound like you shouldn't try this, shouldn't even try it. And that's what hurts is that I can see, I can now imagine many people who would benefit from stoicism that won't even try it because they've read this article. And that just makes me sad. But then also it makes it look like I've done this thing that I just did it to help people. And it makes me look like I'm a bad person for doing that. And that makes me sad that I get painted in this negative light. Is that even close?

Starting point is 02:14:31 Yeah, I would say a lot of that lands. And the piece, interestingly, was not totally anti-stoicism. In fact, the writer claimed to be this long-term stoic, but wanted to point out some of the downside risks of stoicism, which I found interesting. I thought that's an article worth writing. What are the but either they didn't do enough homework or they're just looking for a sensational paragraph so that they can paint themselves on the thoughtful, positive side while putting someone as a straw man on the opposite side, which was upsetting, right? Because it's all been done for free. He gave away three compilations of Seneca's writing called the Tao of Seneca. It's free PDFs. Anybody can find them. Huge project, really time-consuming in any case. But yes, I would say a lot of that lands. So as long as you can keep sitting with that pain, if you focus on the pain, you won't go to anger likely. But you'll notice, as you described it, a boundary was crossed. And this

Starting point is 02:15:42 is where anger is valuable. Anger points out a red flag. Someone just crossed a boundary that I have. And your boundary is making stoicism appear to be not valuable so people don't even try it. And making you appear to have bad intent when you know you only have good intent. Those are two boundaries that just got crossed by this article. And if you then can stay feeling your pain, not feeling the anger, and if you want to open up conversation with this person, say, hey, I'd just like to chat and share only, here's a boundary that I have. You crossed it. Here's how it impacted me. I don't know if you care or not, but if you do, then I'd love to see you do something

Starting point is 02:16:33 different. And what's interesting is Tim, that when you share your pain and a boundary that got crossed, you're never accusing. You're just saying, this is what's going on with me. And people are actually open to hearing that. But anger is you and instantly people's brains will shut down and they won't hear a goddamn word you say. So in terms of being effective and influential and changing behavior, anger is a zero and expressing your pain and the boundary that got crossed is larger than a zero, has a chance of being effective. So you just did it. Now you'd have to keep that practice going and keep each time this happens, thinks, how does this hurt? And really say it out to yourself, say it out to someone, write it down on a piece of

Starting point is 02:17:28 paper, write a poem about it. That's actually insanely effective. I don't know why. And it will prevent you from even going to anger. And it'll make you much more effective in your relationships. Now, I'm yet to start a new relationship, so I'm not the expert here. And clearly, I failed in mine. But I'm hoping that I will be able to test out in a new relationship how not going to anger makes it a much more harmonious relationship. Yeah. Thank you, Matt. I mean, just talking about it, honestly, is helpful. And I think

Starting point is 02:18:01 it's notable for me also because, and I must give credit where credit is due, my ex was such a spectacular communicator and so emotionally intelligent and effective at persuading me to take workshops that never in a million years would 25-year-old Tim have considered for a nanosecond that whether it's the work of the Hendricks or nonviolent communication, the anger shows up much, much less for me now. Could just be plummeting testosterone levels as I get older. Who knows? I'll take whatever I can get in that department, frankly. And I think for that reason, this morning was notable. I was like, wow, I'm getting really,

Starting point is 02:18:51 I'm, to use more active language, I am allowing this to trigger me or I am triggering myself by reading this article. What the fuck is going on here? Why is my response so noticeable? And I appreciate you taking me through the practice because I do think this is something that'll be valuable to me.

Starting point is 02:19:13 Matt, we've covered a lot of ground today and I really appreciate you taking all of the time that you have. People can find you online at themosharymethod.com, M-O-C-H-A-R-Y, on Twitter, at Matt Moshary. Is there anything else that you would like to add? Any requests of the audience? Anything you'd like to point people to? Anything at all that you would like to say or ask before we wind up? Now, this has been super fun, Tim. we're going to post the link to the entire

Starting point is 02:19:45 curriculum on which is all free as you pointed out before i am completely full in terms of my coaching but i actually have hired other coaches who i think are frankly better than i am so people want the mishari method applied we have coaches that they can help them do it and that's it all right man, I appreciate the time once again. And to everybody listening, as per usual, we will link to everything in the show notes at tim.blog slash podcast. You can just search Matt and he will no doubt be one of the first results. And until next time, just be a bit kinder than is necessary. That includes to yourself. If you're feeling anger, see if you can find the pain.

Starting point is 02:20:32 And as always, thanks for tuning in. Until next time. Thanks, Tim. Hey, guys, this is Tim again. Just one more thing before you take off, and that is Five Bullet Friday. Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little fun before the weekend? Between one and a half and two million people subscribe to my free newsletter, my super short newsletter called FiveBulletFriday. Easy to sign up, easy to cancel. It is basically a half page that I send out every Friday to share the coolest things I've found or discovered or have started exploring over that week. It's kind of like my diary of cool things. It often includes articles I'm reading, books I'm reading, albums,

Starting point is 02:21:09 perhaps, gadgets, gizmos, all sorts of tech tricks and so on that get sent to me by my friends, including a lot of podcast guests. And these strange esoteric things end up in my field, and then I test them, and then I share them with you. So if that sounds fun, again, it's very short, a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend, something to think about. If you'd like to try it out, just go to tim.blog slash Friday, type that into your browser, tim.blog slash Friday, drop in your email and you'll get the very next one. Thanks for listening. This episode is brought to you by Helix Sleep. Helix Sleep is a premium mattress brand that provides tailored mattresses based on your

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