Warum Erfolg einsam macht

0:00Admit it, you aren't like them. You're not even close. You may occasionally dress yourself up as one of them, watch the same mindless television shows as they do, maybe even eat the same fast food sometimes. But it seems that the more you try to fit in, the more you feel like an outsider. Watching normal people as they go about their automatic existences. For every time you say club passwords like "Have a nice day." and "Weather's awful today, eh?" you yearn inside to say forbidden things like "Tell me something that makes you cry." or "What do you think deja vu is for?" Face it, you even want to talk to that girl in the elevator.

0:37But what if that girl in the elevator and the balding man who walks past your cubicle at work are thinking the same thing? Who knows what you might learn from taking a chance on a conversation with a stranger? Everybody carries a piece of the puzzle. Nobody comes into your life by mere coincidence. Trust your instincts. Do the unexpected. Find the others. There's many Matrix undertones here.

1:03>> [laughter] >> Um Man, I think we might have we might have covered this on a past podcast, but um the idea that many people want to be exceptional, but they're afraid of being an exception. I think it's such a it's it's wanting it's wanting an outcome without the requirement that the outcome has.

1:30And so we can't do the same thing that everyone else approves of and then somehow get a different outcome than everyone else does. And so I think it's that's why high that's why high agency for me is something that I look for in other people, which is you know asking someone why do you believe what you believe? And we talked about this yesterday, but if you have a belief and you can't explain why you believe it, it's not yours, it's someone else's.

2:01And most people walk around parroting other people's words for the vast majority of their lives. And so they basically act as recorders where they clicked record at one point in their life and then they click play and another time in their life and they're just clicking record, play, record, play, record, play over and over again. And the reason there's that in my opinion that other self that's behind it is because none of those words are yours.

2:26And so it makes sense that people feel alone and they feel like they're acting because they never say what they think. And as a result, they also sound like everyone else because they were never themselves to begin with. It's those first three lines. Admit it, you aren't like them. You're not even close. And it sounds quite >> [snorts] >> sort of self-aggrandizing or or kind of narcissistic in a way to you considering yourself as being above other people. I think I don't think it's to do with that. it's that so many people curtail themselves and optimize for a mean that may not exist.

3:09You know, they're reverting to a mean that's just a figment of everybody's imagination. And the only reason that people coalesce there is because other people think that other people are going to coalesce there. You know, the Keynesian beauty contest? Like same same as that, basically. >> know what it is. >> Oh, okay. So a Keynesian beauty contest is uh people make judgments on not who they think is the most beautiful, but on who they think other people think are the most beautiful. And then knowing that other people know that other people are going to make that decision based on that, you end up with this infinite regress of trying to predict things.

3:40This is what's happening with politics, right? It's not about picking the person that you want in your area, it's about making the most tactical pick to ensure that overall, accounting for the other people and what they're going to choose, that the person that you really don't want in power doesn't get the seat in your area, but somebody else in some other area. So when you have this sort of recursive but it it happens socially, too. I say the thing that I think that you want to hear, knowing that you know that I could say the thing that I want, but so what I say is some mediator halfway between what I want to say and what I think you want to hear from me.

4:12And it just ends up with people nobody being themselves and everybody being some weird simulacrum of what they think everybody else wants them to be. And if we go back to motivation, the question is what quote motivates people to do this or or to behave in this way. And so most times it's fear of something, right? And so they're afraid of something in their minds, but when you actually play it out, which is one of my favorite frames in the world, which is let's take this to the hypothetical stream or let's play it out two more two more plays, two more turns. And most times you end up getting way closer to what you really want the moment after the bad thing that you think will happen happens. And so we we've discussed that that there's so many amazing things that have happened in my life and your life and many people's lives that happened immediately after they get out they have something bad happen that gets them out of that realm of just barely good enough, but not really. And so we have this fear of disrupting the just barely good enough, but not really, but you're also already miserable. And so the fear of disrupting your misery feels ridiculous. And so when you think about it like that right, so when you think about it like that, exactly.

5:28The only thing we have to lose is the current misery of mediocrity that we're trudging through every day. And so worst case, you're just also still miserable, but maybe you won't be mediocre anymore cuz at least you won't be like everyone else. But there's also a possibility that you are not miserable and also not mediocre. And by doing that, you might also just start seeing who you really are because I think a great portion of our identity comes from the proof that we give ourselves of the things that we've done and said in the past. And so if we want to build towards a different version of ourselves, then it begins with accruing, stacking evidence that aligns with that future self. And so in some ways break the plate.

6:14Take the shot. Get rejected. Look Because when you do that, then again, the worst case is you have a broken plate, but you didn't like that plate to begin with. It is astounding how many people want to be spectacular in life, but also want to fit in and be normal. Like by being normal, you are by definition aiming for average. Normal people get normal results.

6:39Weird people get weird results. You literally can't do what everyone else does and not expect to get what everyone else has. By doing what everyone else does, you guarantee average results. It's your brother, your mom, your friend, the one comment they're going to say, "You've changed. Why are you doing another kick like this? Oh, you're going to try that now? Okay, here we go again."

7:14And thing is is that it's not about them being right or wrong. Again, it's about how right and how wrong they could be. And so for example, let's say you wanted to start a podcast in the past and you did three episodes and then you fell off. And then they think, "I told you so. Stop with these dreams. Stop with this crazy content stuff. You're never going to become an influencer." or whatever your goal is. Replace influencer with what whatever your thing is.

7:40The thing is is that you are still closer having done three than having done zero. And so it's just about directional correctness and realizing that criticizers are more often correct, but when it matters most, incorrect. And so this is where frequency and intensity become uh flipped. So somebody I mean, from the investment world, it's like, okay, if I take 10 bets and I lose nine, some people might say he must be a bad investor. But the question is how much did I lose on the nine and how much did I make on the one?

8:25And the best investors in the world understand the benefits of outsize returns, both on the upside and the downside. And so meaning the perfect way of betting is having no downside and having unlimited upside. You want to make as many of those bets as you can. And in the beginning, that is literally what you have. And so the problem is you have a bet that you take, you make three podcasts, and you didn't stick with it.

8:47And so then criticizer gets one point. But you lost nothing. You maybe even gained a little bit of skill. And you gain some experience, which means you're actually still better off than you than you were when you started. So it is a zero-loss game by choosing to begin. >> That's the thing about cynics. Right 99% of the time and wrong 100% of the time. I use this example cuz I think it really drives it home. So if you if you have judgmental parents or judgmental friends or judgmental whatevers and you date people and you bring them home, if they say, "I don't think this is the girl for you."

9:24they're right every single time your entire life except for the one person that you decide to marry. And then they are absolutely wrong at the time that it mattered most. And the thing is is they get to say on your sixth girlfriend and seventh girlfriend and eighth girlfriend because let's face it, you've been alive for a while. I have a perfect I have a perfect guess. I'm right 100% of the time. This will we'll see how long this one lasts. And two years in, they're like, "See? You finally broke up with her. I told you the beginning it wasn't going to last."

9:54Well, it never [ __ ] lasts except for the one that's going to stick. Duh. And the business never works until it's the one that does. And the episode doesn't take off except for the one that does. And whether it's 10 or 10,000, eventually one does because when you do more, you get better at doing. Which is why not quitting is the best skill. And the only thing that matters. Because by default with an infinite game perspective, which I encourage everyone to have, the point of the game is to keep the game going.

10:25It's the only objective. Because even if I obviously come from the business world. So, even if your goal was to be number one at business, it's like by what metric? Enterprise value, growth, profit, revenue. All of a sudden, okay, maybe it's richest man in the world. Okay, for how long? Look at the history of mankind. Not one person has ever been richest man forever. And so, you get to touch the top even if you're that one guy for a moment. And then it's gone again. And so, you can't have that as the the end point because it is by its very nature finite. But the competitor whose objective is to continue to play can't be beaten because by playing he wins. 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 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 book a call with my team and we will look at the business, see if we can help, and if we can, we'll fly you out to Vegas and we'll do this in person live.