The World Rewards Your Courage, Not Your Intellect

0:01The world will reward you in proportion to your courage, not your intellect. The most dangerous person in the world is the one who continues to show up every day, even when the rewards are not guaranteed. Your potential is determined by the amount of uncertainty you're able to tolerate, and how long you can tolerate it for. You can beat 99% of people if you can master the shame of rejection, the bord of repetition, and the pain of feedback.

0:24I was asked um if you could transfer only one trade to your son, what would it be? Um and I really thought a lot about it. I was like of all the trades, what would I trade? What I would transfer? And I think it's courage because if you don't have courage, nothing else matters. Like you can't take the f you can't take any action. You can't do anything worth doing. You can't stand for anything because you have no courage. Um, and so I think that's why it's it's so much more preferable to be a failure than a coward. And I think that I would hope that I could transfer just that lesson and try and reinforce as many times as I can in his upbringing that like you have to you have to take jumps and you have to lose and you have to be willing to lose and then realize that losing doesn't actually make you a loser because losing is the is the is the first signal on the path to winning but like not playing is the actual signal for for a forever loss. What is courage to you?

1:37It's >> a really good question. I need to define it better. Um, being willing to take action where there's a large short-term cost with an uncertain delayed benefit.

2:04So, if you want to start a business and you think that you're going to get made fun of or snider remarks or like, "Oh yeah, you're doing your podcast thing again. Oh yeah, don't don't don't miss out, right?" You know, don't miss Friday night. It's a big podcast. Um, you know, you're going to suffer that short term. That's a known cost. And then the payoff is delayed and uncertain. Like not only will it come later, if it were guaranteed if you knew you were going to make a million dollars doing a podcast, then you'd be like whatever, [ __ ] it.

2:35Like it it takes significantly less courage, but I think it's the fact that it is unknown and delayed. So you basically have to be willing to get kicked in the nuts and multiple times and sometimes for extended durations >> before the hope that you will get something. But I think the only way to to to get through that kind of kicked in the nuts period for however long it's going to be um is realizing that you have two paths. One that is guaranteed which is that the path you're currently on will not get you where you want to go. And the other path it is not guaranteed to get you where you want to go but it's the only one where you have a shot where you do. And that's where your potential is determined by the amount of uncertainty you're able to tolerate and how long you can tolerate it for.

3:21>> And I think that also goes to the bigger the games we play, right? That like the longer the game you play, the bigger the game you play. And so if you want to create rockets that go to the moon, you have to be able to deal with uncertainty for just an absolutely absurd amount of time compared to most humans on any endeavor. >> There's a line at the end, pain of feedback. >> I'm interested in that. Um, I mean, rejection hurts. Uh, failing hurts. And I think when you when you when you give it your all and then the market, society, the universe, whatever determines that you are still not enough, that is very painful. Um, I think that in time [snorts] you learn that feedback is fuel rather than failure. And once that new association gets paired, I mean, you've had plenty of incredibly successful people on this podcast and I would say many of them have the same kind of I would call it lesson is like it's not it's not failure, it's feedback or it's not failure. Um, but it just means that like fundamentally they have a different pairing for losing. And so everyone has to go through this because like like losing losing is good and feeling bad about losing is good because it forces you to change and that change means that over time as long as you're changing in the correct direction you get better

4:42>> or else you would continue to do the strategy that caused you to lose last time and you would just run it back again. And this is why I have this like I actually I thought on on the way over here I was thinking about this and um like I think one of the big losses or failures of society right now is that we are trying to castrate the teeth from the pain of loss. We're trying to not allow kids people the feeling to feel bad.

5:11>> It's like we have determined that feeling bad is bad but feeling bad is not bad. Feeling bad is a signal so that we need to change because if no one feels bad ever then it means that everyone is doing what they want to do all the time and that is not how a functioning society works. Sometimes people do stupid [ __ ] and need to know and feel bad for it. >> Eventually reality is going to come into contact with your decisions. Yes. >> And the more that that's put off the less likely you are to come up with a way to avoid that reality coming into reality. And so, so the way that you know right now what's going and this is probably the the more frightening part about like some of the media that's out there is like trying to just redefine reality and create a fantasy where you losing and you feeling bad isn't true.

5:55But it doesn't change reality. It just changes someone's perception of it for the short term and then they have to pay reality back with interest in time. And like the check always comes due. It's just like the interest is much bigger. And so um in light of you know my son my child that I have in the future like I want him to experience the pain of loss so that he can learn cuz like how else can you learn you have to otherwise it's just it's everything's quote you know going by feeling and then also somehow thinking that feeling bad is bad and also that feeling good is good and there's tons of things that you can probably do that feel good that are not good and there's tons of things that you can do that feel bad that are not bad.

6:37>> Well, what a gift to give somebody to say you can feel bad and not feel bad about it. >> Yeah. It's and like and that's okay. Like you lost, what will we learn? What will we do next time? Great. Do it again next time. >> It feels like resilience. >> Yeah. as opposed to any time that you feel this emotion which is negative that is worthy of rushing in and panic and control and distance that that's almost like a formula for fragility.

7:08So laddered onto this, I know we haven't talked in a while, so this is this is fun. Um, is the idea that we need to like that because you because you feel bad, it means that the path that you're on like you need to change something. And so it's equal opposite, which is like, okay, if we know that we're on the path of getting kicked in the nuts right now, and I know I'm on my 17th or 100th podcast, and I'm still not like a millionaire yet,

7:34>> I I have not achieved what I want yet. It does not mean that I have to change course. >> But earlier on you said that >> bad feelings feeling bad are important to update the way that you're approaching this situation. So how do you distinguish between the two? >> No. And that's and that's u and I would say what you what you hit on is is the is the crux of it which is judgment which is like and this is one of the hardest ones is like how do you help someone recognize patterns of when you need to basically it's the internal question when do I push and when do I pivot right when do I push through the hardship versus when do I adjust

8:08>> am I giving up on this set in the gym because I'm being a [ __ ] or am I giving up because I'm about to injure myself >> yeah and so pivot I like that >> yeah and I' and I've worked with this a lot because it's a pretty classic entrepreneurship issue of like do I have product market fit or like do I need to keep pushing. You're like, you know, where am I just trying to push up a hill? Um, is that if one of the fundamental assumptions that you began your quest with has been proven untrue based on the feedback, then that is where pivoting makes sense. So, if you said like, I think that I'm going to create um a doggy skateboard because I think that um a lot of dog owners will want to buy skateboards for their dog.

8:45um would be like and I believe that the percentage like and I would make a you know a billion dollars doing this um that would mean that there's this size of the market this percentage needs to be the take rate in order for me to get that that market share. It's like okay if if I talked to a hundred dog owners and none of them want to buy my my doggy skateboard. I would not say that is a push situation. I would say that is a pivot situation because our fundamental assumption that we started this quest with >> is false.

9:10>> And so we need to take that feedback and then pivot. if as we're going through they're saying uh maybe but like I don't know what you have in your hands. What the hell is that? So it's like the assumption is not proven but it's more of an execution issue. And so it's like okay I just need to get better. I need to push through. But I'm saying it is definitely one of the harder um lines to to know like where when should I push when should I pivot? Uh what lesson do I learn from losing? M

9:38>> because losing losing teaches you [ __ ] and we just need to make sure that we learn the right thing like teaching will occur. >> Yes. Whether you take it away or not is up to you. >> It's the it's the um I I hired my first employee and he was a [ __ ] ass. Therefore, all employees suck. Right. So like losing will teach you something. It's just want to make sure that we learn the right lesson. I feel if you like this video and you're a business owner who wants to break through your current revenue ceiling, I distilled every lesson from scaling 10 businesses past 10 million and three businesses past 100 million into a completely free scaling road map that I've used to go from 0 to 1, 0 to 10, and 0 to 100 plus.

10:15And so you can click here and you can check it out. Again, absolutely free. And since you're a business owner, appreciate you and uh enjoy.