Schlechte Freunde erkennen

0:00Here's how to spot friends that are worth cutting. They only talk about your past, not your future. So, if you go and you hang out with your buddies and all they can really reminisce with you on is the things that you did together, but none of them are talking about what they're going to do or what you're going to do, for me, that's a telltale sign that they're living in the past. They're not even living in the present. Their best years are behind them. And for most of us, we want our best years to be ahead of us. And we want somebody who's also looking at the same goal as us, which is growth, which is moving forward, which is making progress. If you are a growth-oriented individual and [music] you feel like you're not sure about your environment or if it's conducive, the easiest litmus test is who talks about [music] the future and who talks about the past. Keep the ones who are only talking about the future, cut the [music] ones talking about the past. The best thing that I ever did was not listen to other people's opinions about my life. They don't want the best version of you, they want the version of you who best serves them. Now, when I first said this, I got flak from a bunch of parents. They're like, "I really want the best for my kids."

0:57>> [music] >> I was like, "That's not true. You want a version of your children who [music] serves what you think will make you look the best." Family, I would say, more often than not, has a closer alignment with your long-term goals than strangers [music] do. And so, it makes sense that family would have more aligned interests, but not completely aligned interests with you. Cuz the only person who has a completely aligned interests with you is future you. Keeping that as the litmus test of whose opinion I'm going to listen to, although it's more difficult, has ultimately been very fruitful for me. Because if you're looking at two even two parents, you can disprove that concept by saying, "Okay, well, both parents want different things for me." Of the things that both parents want, which of the things help each of the parents individually out? Cuz I can promise you that the thing that one parent wants doesn't hurt them, it help the other parent if they disagree. It's usually something that's more aligned with their worldview, their beliefs, or what they will get status from in their community for you doing. And so, all of the things I just described have nothing to do with you. So, why consider [music] it? I'll say this up front. I hate why questions cuz who knows why, but I would say that I if if I had to make a guess on why we care about other people's opinions, it's because we've learned to care about other people's opinions. And when we're children, we learn to orient ourselves to the world through other people telling us what is what.

2:09Literally, when you're a kid, you point, and then you say, [music] "What's that?" And then they say, "This." And so you have to listen to other people on the way up. The problem is at some point you have to turn it off and say, "You know, some of the people I was listening to had no idea what they were saying." But, you don't know they have no idea because you don't have a context to make a judgment. You have to learn to become human, and then you have to learn to become yourself. And I think that at that turning point, you then have to analyze the beliefs that you've been given, and then keep the ones that you choose.

2:35Most parents are risk-averse rather than risk-taking for their children. So, like we are willing to take more risk for ourselves often times than our parents are willing to take on our behalf. And I think that's normal, they want to like keep you alive. There's a lot of evolutionary drive behind that. And so they're playing not to lose, but if you want to play to win, then you have to take different bets. I think a lot of younger people get really confused because they spend a lot of time talking about ideas and very little talking about doing actions. And so if you just define the world by only things that occur in it, and not things that occur in your mind, there's a lot less noise.

3:05And so it becomes [music] easier to see the forest for the trees. Let's say I have an employee and I want to hop on a one-on-one, and they said something in a meeting before, and I say, "I think the intention behind your statement was that you wanted me to do this, and this is how I was feeling about your statement, and this is probably what you were feeling." Everything I just said is a complete waste of time, because all I know is that they said this. And so just focus on the facts, and if you [music] can do that, it actually makes living life a lot easier or navigating life a lot easier, at least it has for me, because those are the only objective truths. An easy frame for that is like, would it [music] be admitted to a court as evidence? You saying you were offended is not evidence. John said this to Sally, these words, that's evidence, indisputable. And so just look at the things that are beyond reproach, look at the things that are indisputable, look at the things that are facts that are observable, and the world gets a lot quieter, and you also realize that most people are full of and don't know what they're talking about. I mean, if someone was like, "Hey Alex, why did you get into business?" I could make up an answer. It's just how do we know it's true? Trying to figure out someone's intention is If someone asked me, "Why did you get into business?"

4:07I can make up an answer. Anyone can make up an answer. Why do you like making money? Why do you like sales? Why do you like marketing? Why are you good at this? I can make up any answer. All I know is that these things have occurred. And so, we can look at my actions and we can look at the results. The rest of it, of which which had what influence on what? Like I can't relive my life and I can't run the experiment. And so, trying to determine why, like was it because my mom didn't hug me? Was it because my dad hugged me too hard? Who knows? I can give anyone and someone will nod and say, "Great." Because we've trained ourselves to say to answer when someone says, "Why do you do that?" You give them words and they nod and say, "Oh, that's interesting." But like it doesn't mean it's true. And so, I just try and skirt the whole conversation because there's no point. [music] So, when someone's like, "Well, I'm the type of person who" I'm like, "Just stop." Then they start using this label to decide whether or why they can or can't do something. "I wouldn't be a success with that cuz I'm a neat freak." Why? Because [music] you take trash out of your car regularly? Why does that have anything to do with whether you could do this or not? I used to think and [music] told people I was bad at math until I was 25.

5:05Post college, post consulting job, all of it. And then I decided that I was not going to be bad at math. And so, I was like, "Okay, well, I'm not going to use a calculator." And so, then I started getting better and better at doing math problems. [music] And then lo and behold, when I took the GMAT, I was like, "Okay, I have to study twice as hard for the math section." [music] And I did just as well on the math section as I did on my verbal. But my whole life I had said I was bad at math. And so, I didn't study as hard because I was bad at it. Everyone who's listening to this has something they say about themselves.

5:31They're like, "I'm not organized. I'm an early bird." Right? Like we have these labels we give ourselves, but like why do we have these labels? Like if you needed to wake up early, you wake up early. If you needed to stay up late, you you stay up late. The labels change our behavior more than we change the labels. I really abhor labels overall because I feel like it limits my action. When I get on podcast and I have talks and people try and label me, you'll probably actively see me break the label almost every time because I'm [music] really aware of it. And a lot of people aren't. And I don't think people do it on purpose in a bad way. I just think that they will speak things over you, which is why I hate going home because no one speaks over you more than your family and [music] the people knew you in high school. Alex has always had a short temper. You you're a hothead. Literally, people from home describe me that way. I was like, "I don't think I'm a hothead." They will say that and then I feel like I have to really put up my mental like defenses to be like, "This is [music] not true. Here is the evidence that this is not true.

6:20What would a hothead do in these scenarios? That is not the way I behaved. Therefore, right?" And I have to I have to basically unwind that >> [music] >> whenever I go there. And so, that is why I've been an advocate of like, "If you want to change your behavior, change your environment." because they're not going to reinforce labels that you then also perpetuate in your own mind by the actions you take as a [music] result. And the only reason they want to label is because it's shorthand for other people to understand, not because it's true. They just want to say he had [music] a bad childhood. And so, they take all your whole life and they just say, "Bad." That's not true. There's more nuance to it. I prefer to think of ideals and think of taking steps towards those ideals. And since ideals are not binary of like he is courageous or he is not courageous, but how courageous is he or how patient is he, not impatient or patient, but how much, then I know the values that I want to embody and then I just take steps towards those every day with the actions I take. Real quick, if you're 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 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.