Die Mission seines Lebens

0:00Like my mission through acquisition.com and really my life is like I want to document and share the best practices building built building wonderful businesses. Like that is what I want to do. And I'm like I will die and the [ __ ] that I accumulate is irrelevant. And so like it's a travesty to me that like Elon and Bezos and Warren, like they they don't they didn't write any books. Like Like that's I mean that's the point. You know what I mean?

0:29Like it's it's for me for me. You know what I mean? That's real for me. Uh is like sharing that. Um and so the businesses are just there to lend credence to what to to the books and the topics and the lessons and give me real stories to drive real fundamental truths home. Um and candidly to discover them as I go because like I mean I'm horrified at the things that I I you know said 5 years ago that I thought were true. But you know the only thing short of that is not saying anything which is is something that I consider every day of like is this this is this is as least wrong as I can think of it currently. You know, and maybe I will think of it less wrong in the future.

1:08Were you um you seem like a grinder. When you were building these businesses, were you just like uh doing 80-hour 100-hour work weeks? And what about now? Because you're like yoked. You're a huge you look like a bodybuilder. So So like how did you balance like uh being fit and getting married and you but I don't know you well, but you seem like you'd be grinding hard.

1:32>> So my wife works in the business with me. So we are true 50/50 partners. Like it's very rare. I like I recognize how rare it is. She actually is 100% matched with me and like she just as much be on this call because she runs the other half. Like she from a work standpoint, she has more output than I do. Um she is the operator. So she builds the infrastructure, she does the recruiting, she sets the the HR the HR stuff, she does the culture, she like she does I mean she runs everything. Um I just you know occasionally come up with a good idea and and try and stick with it long enough um to see it come true. But in terms of grinding, we this is what we like I love business.

2:10Like I love this and there's nothing that really stimulates me like this. And so I do as much of it as I can. And if we want to go out to dinner, we go out to dinner. You know, but like we're we're I was just saying we're single. So we don't have kids. And so we work from like five-ish to four-ish, you know. Um and then you know, usually in the middle of the day we'll probably go to the gym for an hour or two and then come back and keep working and go out to dinner at night and that's that's kind of our lives.

2:40You seem pretty um this isn't I would say I'm a little bit I'm I'm definitely this. Sean has a little bit of it, too. Like manic's not the right word, but like neurotic maybe is a better word. Um where it's like uh you're you're there's something that's deep rooted inside of you that's kind of it's not like you want to do something necessarily. It feels like you're it's more compulsive. Um or obsessed you're obsessed about stuff, which I am as well. Um where if that's true, what's that rooted in? What are you trying to get done? So I think originally the drive was from just crippling insecurity and needing approval, right? Um and then I think from like a behavioral conditioning standpoint, I got immediate feedback that was positive and then I was conditioned to continue those actions.

3:29Now uh I continue to do them without the original catalyst that got them going to begin with. So I don't I don't think I suffer, you know, from the insecurities as much as I used to. I'd say I'm probably 30% better than I was at the beginning. And it might just be because I have this massive big pile of money that I can use as an emotional crutch to why I'm not a piece of [ __ ] Um That that would help. >> being like I mean and if it were all disappeared, I'd find out how much actual growth I had or if I just compensated by circumstance and you know, compensate for the deficiency. I don't know. You can send it to me and we'll we'll find out. We'll see.

4:03>> I Yeah, let's run the experiment. [laughter] I like So there's the compulsion and like this last year I pretty much took off. Like I did not work that much. Um and so I saw the difference and like I have I have come to accept that I love working and I don't need to judge myself for that or or take in other people's judgment on how much I should quote do.

4:27Like this is my life and this is what I like doing. And their ideals that they've arbitrarily made up as what they define as balance are irrelevant to me. You said you took last year off. What did you do? What did you get up to? We went out to dinner every single night to a five-star restaurant for for seven straight months. We went to I mean we we we moved to Vegas temporarily. Um we traveled a lot. Uh went to Cabo, went to Scottsdale, went to Sedona, went to Flagstaff. Um traveled all over. Um went out, did did stuff. Um Felt felt honestly pretty empty. Like you can only eat so many times. Like there's just not a lot to do. Um It feels good having that rest though. I mean when I sold my company, which was uh a year ago last week, the first six six months I was like I need to decompress. It felt good to have it. And then and then I was like and I'm in that phase now where I'm like, all right, now I'm ready for war again. You you can't like I I like you can't be in the trenches, I think. Like or rather you need breaks from from being in the from being at war. And and maybe even phrasing it I'm just throwing this out there like phrasing it is instead of a like a break is a shift in how you're thinking cuz like it's really like it's going from dirt to clouds, but I still think it's high leverage activity. You know what I mean? Or like output. It's just a different type of output. You said something on one of your videos that um you're one of the only other people that I have heard say this phrase. I use it a lot, which is yeah, I had a season like or this season I'm doing this or I had a season where I was really just focusing on X. And that's been like a game changer for me.

6:01My my personal trainer and kind of coach, he's like my mindset coach plus trainer. He does this all the time where he's like he's like, I'm I'm in a season right now where I'm I'm just uh he'll be like, you know, I'm I'm practicing not waiting. And then he's like, hey, he comes up with these little themes or he'll be like, right now I'm in a season where I'm going to eat whatever I want. And it's kind of like in the entrepreneurial world, it's like time boxing. So I'm going to give myself 2 hours to get this [ __ ] [ __ ] done or I'm going to launch in the next 2 weeks no matter what, right? Like we I've used time boxing for productivity.

6:28And now this season's thing, it makes every like decision you're making less heavy [snorts] of a commit because you're like it's okay. Yeah, there's there's beginnings and ends and this season is going to feel a little different just like winter feels different than summer. That's how I use it. Do you do you use it like that? I just noticed you said that phrase. 100%. Yeah, and maybe it's a fitness thing. I have no idea. Um I I've Yeah, I I have no ownership over it. Right. Yeah, it's like Vulcan seasons. Exactly.

6:55>> [laughter] >> Yeah, I mean I I think about it in terms of entrepreneurial seasons. Um and I at least for me might have been like five-year chunks. And so this is going to be my fourth season. Um and they've roughly been about the same length. So I think that it probably takes me like three-ish years to like really see something through and then two years to figure out how I'm going to transition from that thing or realize or monetize, you know, whatever. Um that's what I It's kind of like a P cycle almost. Real quick, if you are business owner and you are not growing as fast as you'd like, I'd like to give you a free gift. So my team and I put together the $100 million scaling road map, which is basically 200 hours of us looking over all the portfolio companies we've had and what stages of growth they went through and more importantly, where they got stuck and how they got past it. And so we broke it into these 10 stages and we made this little kind of quiz thing where if you put in your business information, it'll tell you where you're at and the most important part for you, what to do for each of functions of the business across product, marketing, sales, customer success, recruiting, IT, human resources, and finance. And so no matter what you're struggling with, someone else has already struggled with it and solved it. And so I'd like to give you this thing absolutely free. You can go to acquisition.com/roadmap, plug in your business information, and if you want us to actually help you deconstruct the business and you're trying to scale, we'd love to help you out. On the thank you page, you can just book a call with my team and we will look at the business, see if we can help, and if we can, we'll invite you out to Vegas and we'll do this in person live.