Is Shame an Illusion?

0:00You said, "Sometimes I think shame was invented by people who have to prevent people who have not from taking action." Hmm. Do you think shame is an illusion? >> Um I would say shame is a feeling that people experience. Um and in order to know shame has occurred, uh I would say that you broke other people's rules. So, guilt is when you break your own rules. Shame is when you break other people's rules. You can feel guilt and shame if you break your own and other people's rules.

0:31You can feel just guilt, the things that you do uh on your own that you're feel guilty about, um but you don't feel ashamed. On the flip side, um like basically, the things that you do on your own, you are ashamed of, but you don't feel guilty about. So, if I just like the things you do on your own.

0:56>> [laughter] >> Um if other people were to find out about them, you might feel weird about it, right? That weirdness is the shame. But if the fact that you do them, um means that you don't have any issues with it. You just know other people have issues with it. And so, it's just navigating basically what whose rules am I listening to. And so, it's a great signal to know whose whose rule book am I following for my life.

1:24>> Who benefits from someone feeling shame? >> Oh, I mean, it's a status thing most of the time. So, like if it So, shame has uses. Like shame is not bad. It's like shame's like if someone does something [ __ ] up and it hurts lots of people, they should feel ashamed. And so, it's a very powerful punishment mechanism that we as a group of humans do to get other humans to act in a prosocial way. Like we shame them.

1:51And it feels so bad because uh back in the day, you getting ostracized from the group meant that you could die. And so, it was a big point, like, you know, don't don't do [ __ ] you're not supposed to do according to our rules. And if you don't listen to our rules, you will know that you didn't listen, we will shame you. We will ostracize you, we will ignore you. We will say bad things to you about you, and you will no longer have access to the resources that we have.

2:17So, I think shame actually has a purpose. The difficulty people have now is that like the stakes are different. It's not about life and death, but it still feels the same. >> If someone woke up tomorrow with no shame, how would their life change? >> Well, I think that they would do a lot of stuff that So, I think there's a reason that a lot of really successful entrepreneurs have, you know, call it touch by the tism or a hint of Asperger's or whatever you want to call it. It's like they have less they have less social feedback loops.

2:46And what that allows them to do is just think purely from first principles rather than reasoning through other people's judgments. And so, if you're like, I don't know if this is a good idea, I'm going to ask 10 people. Getting 10 people to agree is a great way to A, stay normal, and B, do nothing. And so, you have to you have to be willing if you want an outsized outcome, you have to be willing to do things the vast majority of people disagree with. Now, Larry Ellison said this, and I think it's it's very good, which is if you do what other people disagree with, either they are right, which is the vast majority of the time, and you're wrong, or they are wrong, and you're right. And in those instances, if you base businesses around them, you make tremendous amounts of money. It's when you see something that other people don't see. And the way to do that is to be willing to accept that in the short term, people disagree with you.

3:31And so, that is where I'd say shame does not pay off in the world of innovation, but in the world of social construct and like behaving, I think shame is a very good thing. >> That's fascinating. >> Yeah, it's not good or bad. It's just it's under what conditions. Same thing with guilt. People should feel guilty about stuff. You broke your own rules. You shouldn't do that. >> All right. I'm trying to think through this in real time, but just as a mechanism to find like business opportunities and in innovation, like should you be looking toward the places which people typically have a lot of ideas and opinions around and try to see if anyone's actually thinking from first principles?

4:10>> I mean, I think uh a different way of thinking about it is just like what is You want to find people's trash. What do people What do people think like I'll give a simple example. A way to spot a quote good investment is a team that enters the playoff and is the 16th seed out of 16 seeds and you're like that is way too low of a seed. I think they're way [ __ ] better than that. That is where you bet on the fact that you're right. Now, that's truly sports betting which I'm not condoning, but that idea is how you translate that into the business setting. People are really sleeping on old people insurance. I don't whatever.

4:45Uh I don't see like nearly enough, but like I'm looking at the math the you know, the population's aging. If I look at where wealth is distributed, it's all here. When I look at new business being started, it's all targeting here. I'm going to go there. Like it's just looking at at the at the numbers and saying like a lot of times the quote missed opportunities are supply demand mismatches. So, where is there significantly more demand? How many more people want this thing versus how many people are supplying that thing?

5:10And looking at those. So, like why are peptides exploding? Okay. Why are like why is MisFits still a great business to get into? Because there's still more demand than there is supply and the people who have demand are getting older and need it more and have all the money. >> Right. >> But I think just uh I want to just make this one point for anyone who's listening, especially the younger part of your audience. You do not need to have something that is brand new. Like 99% of businesses are just businesses that already exist that you just need to You could literally just do the same and make money. And if you do better, you'll make a lot of money. Uh it's like if you want to have a multi-billion dollar or trillion-dollar outcome, yes, you'll need to do something that's truly net new.

5:49That being said, those things typically cost a lot of money up front, which means you have to get into the raising capital game. There's nothing wrong with that. It's just a different way to play the game. That is how the the truly de novo ideas um can sometimes come to be, but I think that's very limiting. So, like I took an entrepreneurship class in college and I remember it was like everybody had to come up with a business plan and like almost all the business plans were like inventions. Like almost all of them.

6:14And what's wild is that like that's not like if we were to take a random slice of of the United States economy, the vast majority of businesses are not inventions. They're just like mowing your lawn, cleaning your clothes, like, you know, selling cars, selling insurance. It's like what are the things that people like the easiest way to look at like what opportunities exist, especially for customers who are like you, is just look at your credit card statement. Look at everything you spend money on. You are the customer. It's like are any of these things are things that I'm interested in or I think that I could do? Great, maybe I can start there. And a lot of these businesses don't necessarily require a lot of startup capital to to get going.

6:47You have a weed whacker. All right, save you know, save a little bit of money and you get a weed whacker. It's not like there's you don't have to start really big. I think that there's this whole again, this is fallacy of the perfect pick that like the one business you start is the one that you're going to have the rest of your life and this is not the case. You're going to learn how to market, you're going to sell, you're going to learn how to deliver, you're going to hire, you're going to fire, you're going to learn how to train. There's all these skills that happen even at a small local business that then you can translate to a much better opportunity when you have a little bit more foresight, a little bit more capital and then you can take bigger bets. If you like this video and you're 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 zero to one, zero to 10 and zero to 100 plus. And so you can click here and you can check it out.

7:28Again, absolutely free and since you're business owner, I appreciate you and enjoy.