Was ständige Kritik wirklich kostet

0:00Why do you think there's so much cynicism at the moment, especially on the internet? >> You can always defend no. Like we we actually deal with this a lot at acquisition.com from an investment perspective. And we actually have to check ourselves, which is it's always easy to find a reason not to do an investment. So we have a no bias. And you should have a no I mean you should overall have a no bias. Like you should say okay, here's all the things that could go wrong. And you have to kind of think that way cuz you have to manage risk.

0:28But if you say no to everything, you're always right in the short term. But you're but if you never make an investment, you're wrong in the one way that matters, which is you get no return. And so like you always miss the short-term losses, but you lose the big long-term gain. And so it's again this is a continuum to be managed more than a problem to be solved, but cynicism is short-term.

0:53It's like every So when you So okay, this is So when you go home, right, and you want to start a new business or you have a girl that you're bringing back, and your friends and your family are like she's not going to last or like this isn't going to this isn't going to be forever. They are right. Literally every single time except for the one time you bring your wife home.

1:17And in that time, they're all wrong and it's the one time that [ __ ] matters. And so the idea that But the thing is is because of the false positives or the true positives, they might have been right literally 19 out of 20 times. And if they were right the first time and the second time and the third time and the fourth time, why would they bet against no on the fifth time or the 50th time? But you only need one yes or one positive to change your entire life. And so there's this habit and that's where cynicism comes from, where we get so many positive reinforcers for saying no and being right. But it's only short-term being right because you have to make big bets to win big. And that also means that you're wrong plenty of times and people aren't willing to look stupid for being wrong. This school bet could go wrong.

2:02I'm betting it's not. But everything has risk. And I've been public about it. Right? And so like if anything, but like I've played this out. So like I like I'll tell you how I played this out. I was like, "If it goes wrong, I'll document the things that I that I learned and that I'll apply next time. And I'll do what I've always done. State the facts and tell the truth." It is strange to think about how being cynical or skeptical or kind of sardonic or cutting or aloof, it's used as a proxy for being smart.

2:39Oh, yeah. The worst thing that anybody could be accused of is naive. That's what they're trying to optimize against. They don't want to be seen as naive. Oh, you [ __ ] you hoped that everything was going to be good. Oh, that's I mean, that's cute. Like, you know, the world will teach you. It'll you don't worry. Don't worry. It's like it'll you'll learn. You'll learn. Yeah. People don't want to be naive.

3:03And they'll be right. And that's what's that's what's painful. Is that it takes more effort to start in the beginning, and more people are right about the fact. They're like, "Hey, you're not going to hit it big." And guess what? A month in, you're not. But they're only measuring on months. And at 6 months, you're also not going to hit it big. And they're going to be like, "I'm still [ __ ] right." And at a year, you're still not going to have hit it big. And they'll still be [ __ ] right. And every day that you haven't hit it, they're going to feel like they were right. But they're wrong.

3:30Because they're measuring in days, and you're measuring in decades. There's this idea from Gwenda called the cynical genius illusion. Cynical people are seen to be smarter, but sizable research suggests they actually tend to be dumber. Cynicism is not a sign of intelligence, but a substitute for it. Mhm. A way to shield oneself from betrayal and disappointment without having to actually think. There's a there's was a tweet on um a a doomsday money Twitter guy and he said uh yeah, he's predicted uh 16 out of the last three recessions.

4:02>> [laughter] >> And the thing is is that no one no one recalls the other 13 times that guy was wrong. Yeah. And they don't recall all of the gains that probably were made in the marketplace by people who didn't sell during that time >> period. There was this uh broad Do you you know people forward [ __ ] on WhatsApp? And if it's been forwarded lots of times, it even says at the top forwarded many times. It's like a little warning. And this happened I think around uh COVID. There was an image of one guy, one squaddie wearing army gear walking through the streets of London. And this was forwarded on WhatsApp as evidence that the army was going to come and hold people in the house at gunpoint. And if you left, it was going to be martial law was going to be deployed on the streets of London. And this went [ __ ] nuclear, completely interstellar, absolutely everywhere.

4:58What happened with that? Yeah. What happened with What happened with that Yeah. thing? Not a single person who decided to spout this half-fucking baked opinion that never turned out to be true ever got held to account for that. And I must have received that message like five times. Yeah. Like, hey. You You don't get to just make these like ridiculous like actually stupid [ __ ] claims about the world and then no one call you to account.

5:28I'm going to hit on the cynicism point. Um the world belongs to optimists. Because if you're going to do anything big, you have to believe that it can happen. Otherwise, it never will. That Shawn Puri thing the cynics get to be right and the optimists get to be rich. Yeah. They're like if you look at it from a percentage of success rate, I've been wrong more times than I've been right. I have failed more times than I've succeeded.

5:55But you always succeed more and are right more in the big ways than the people who've been right all along and are wrong Trevor says this, my my editor. He says uh 99% right and 100% wrong. So like, they're they're right 99% of the time. But they're wrong 100% because the only thing that matters is the big one at the end. Like, your family and friends will say that every girl that you ever date is not good enough.

6:23Except for the one time you find the girl that you're actually going to marry. And then it doesn't matter or like this won't last or like this business idea is not going to work. And you might have nine failures. I fit my first nine businesses didn't really amount to anything. Nine. Nine as in the first one spent time, [ __ ] failed. Second one, this one will be different, [ __ ] failed. Third one, this one, this is the one and then seven six more after that, right?

6:51[laughter] I'm just painting this picture because like it's painful as [ __ ] because the whole time everyone is telling you I told you so and they're right. Today. But not forever. Real quick, if you are a 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 in 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 de-constrain 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.