Kritik kommt fast immer von unten

0:00because I have yet to receive criticism from somebody who is ahead of me on in any domain. I have not had people who are bigger than me say that I sucked at fitness and that I shouldn't work out. I haven't had people who are richer than me say that I shouldn't work as hard as I do. I haven't had people who were married longer than me tell me that I'm doing something wrong with my marriage.

0:24The only people who have [ __ ] to say are the people who have time to say it because they're on the sidelines doing [ __ ] as in jack [ __ ] And so I only say this because like it I really struggled for a long time to get over what other people thought. It was very hard for me. Um, and then I think like at some level, like at some point you just have to prove to yourself that you will survive, that you will not die. And I'll tell you a very weird version of this story, but I think it it could wrap us up, which is this. So, believe it or not, um, when I was in up until 8th grade, I was actually very like uh what do you call it? Um, not a hypochondric. When you're afraid of germs, what's that? Is that a hypochondric? But like a afraid like dirty stuff like what I had I had a I was a germaphobe. There you go. I was a germaphobe and uh that seemed probably maybe weird for you to hear see now. I mean mind you it was a long time ago.

1:218th grade was a while ago for me. Um but before that point I like like I would hold my breath if someone was walking in front of me because I didn't want to breathe in their germs. If someone hit a doororknob that I saw I would like you know use my arm and work my way around and do all sorts of crazy you know canoodling. Um I would do all sorts of craziness. You're like where is this going? I promise it was a point. And it was it it got to the point where it started to become a little bit debilitating. It started to get in the way of like how I live my life. And so we had to go on this trip back in the day called Expedition 8. So you did in eighth grade. It was like you went camping. It was like a field trip. And so we had to go five days uh in the middle of the woods with like our grade. And so we went out camping um and I committed that it was going to be impossible for me to like be a germaphobe in the forest. I was like this is like I this is not going to work. I'm not able to eat, right? And so I basically was like, I'm just going to not wash my hands and I'm just going to eat everything that's there and just just not worry about any cleanliness. And if I die, I die.

2:24And so the craziest thing happened. I did the five days. I had dirt on my hands while I was eating the food. I didn't wash my hands once. And then at the end of the trip, I was still alive. And then I waited another week to see if all of the maladies that were probably inside of me were going to come to fruition. And none of them did. And then at that point I was like, so all of the energy that I had been putting in to all of this concern around germs amounted to nothing.

2:56That was a hu it was actually a very big moment for me and I I have maintained that viewpoint um you know for the rest of my life. Like I just don't sweat about that stuff. And so other people's opinions are a lot like those germs. You think the whole time like you know what if they like you're holding your breath. What if they say this? What if this happens? It's like well what if and let's play it out. And then you realize that not only did you not die, no one cared to begin with and no one's even thinking about you. And so like and as somebody who has had a fair amount of like different people try to take shots at me. Nothing's changed in my life.

3:33Nothing. People make hit videos. People take stuff out of that I said out of context. Um, it's okay. It's the internet. If I expect to be completely understood, that is a that is a that is a silly goal to have. And I'll give you another story that really drove this home for me. So, I was on TikTok. I think this is this is a a while ago. And I saw this really old white dude, just normal generic white dude just giving like financial advice, talk about the economy or whatever. and he was getting roasted in the comments like you know grifter like old man go home like all sorts of craziness just telling him like he was a you know fake guru whatever the guy was Ray Dallio he's worth $30 billion and he's like 79 and he's just trying to like help people he's like on TikTok trying to like help the younger generation and when I saw that I realized that you cannot save like you will never be legit legitimate to the ignorant and to and and that to be hated by a bad person is a good thing.

4:40Think about that. Many of us want to avoid being hated in general. And I understand why. It makes sense. No one wants to get hated when they're when you're growing up, etc. But think about the worst person in the world, right? Wouldn't you want them to hate you, right? Like we should judge we should judge our character by the quality of our enemies.

5:05And so if somebody who's completely ignorant, who has no context wants to speak ill of you or your goals, your way of life, take it as a compliment or at the very least just feel bad for the fact that they don't know any better. but in no way should put weight on what they say in the the scales of how you decide how to live.

5:29And so anyways, I just say this because like I had I've had too many voices that were too loud for too long in my life that prevented me from doing the things that I wanted to do. And so I share that little story about Expedition 8 and the dirt under the fingernails, if you will. Um that those germs, you think that they're going to kill you and then nothing happens. They're just germs. >> Real quick, I'm going to show you the exact 10-stage road map from zero to 100 million plus that less than 1% of companies finish. I've now done multiple times. And so, I can say with a lot of confidence that these are the stages as headcount increases that you need to get through. And I broke each of these down by eight different functions of the business, what the constraint feels like, like what are the symptoms of it when you're going through it. And then what steps we actually took to graduate.

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