Es gibt keinen perfekten Zeitpunkt zum Start

0:00People, maybe it's you, are waiting for this perfect moment, but it doesn't come, right? It happens the moment you decide that you're fed up with waiting and decide to take action. And it only becomes the perfect moment when you look back on it because today it just looks like now. I had a conversation with a young man yesterday who said, "Listen, I have demons."

0:22And I was like, "Bro, you don't have [ __ ] demons." I was like, "Shut up." And he was like, >> [laughter] >> So, the thing is this and I I was so visceral with my reaction because I used to say that kind of stuff because I thought it made me hard. I thought it made me complex. I thought it made me mysterious. But it's You don't have demons. You're not self-sabotaged. You don't have mom or dad issues. What you have is a lack of skills in how to behave in a certain condition.

0:50So, when you say you have demons, what it really means if I say, "Okay, what do you mean by that? Define that. How do What is Define having demons, right? What I don't Most people say that they don't mean they actually think they have spiritual demons inside of them." I'm not even going to touch that. What they really mean is that under these conditions I behave a way that is not ideal. And so, what that means is you have a skill deficiency. No [ __ ] You're inexperienced. Of course you have a skill deficiency. You don't have demons.

1:17You don't know how to be consistent. You're not You don't have I don't I just can't stay with any period for a long time. No, it either means you have really high standards, which is fine and you haven't met that person yet, or you just don't know how to behave consistently. It's like when I have a sales guy who's like, "Hey, you know, I'm 30 days into this role and I'm getting I'm getting kind of bored taking sales calls." I'm like, "Oh, your ability to not be able to continue after something gets boring and learn to love the incremental improvements, the hundred or thousand repetitions, is the skill discrepancy that you need to overcome." The best sales people Bad sales people try and have a couple good days. Good sales people get on hot streaks.

2:01Great sales people never get cold. And so that takes discipline to understand how to consistently get yourself hot. How to consistently treat every sale the same way you do when you're on fire. Because there is no being on fire. It means you simply behave differently. It's not like you have magic. You You pause differently. You take longer spaces. You ask the question. Your tonality shifts. And those are skills because you can learn them.

2:28And so this whole thing of like this is this young man, I'm traumatized. First off, you don't even have a [ __ ] definition to trauma. All right? Trauma is a permanent change in behavior from an aversive stimulus. Meaning something bad happens and forever it changes how you act. Now, let's if we understand that as the definition of trauma, is trauma bad? Well, if I touch a stove and then I never touch a stove again when it's hot, is that trauma bad? It permanently changed my behavior from an aversive stimulus. Is that trauma bad?

2:59Well, it prevented me from get how burning the house down from, you know, permanently damaging my hand in the future. No, I would say it was good. And so this whole appraisal of your past being tough or you don't understand, bro. No, and no one cares either. They don't understand nor do they care. And so all anyone is going to care about is how you act, how you behave, what you do based on a series of conditions. And so you just need to expose yourself to the conditions so that you can get the repetitions so that you can learn how to overcome it. The thing that determines whether it's good or bad is whether it creates a behavior that's conducive to your goals.

3:33And so that means that fundamentally you can have a stimulus like touching the stove that creates a behavior that is conducive to the goal. In that way, trauma was good. So, by the way, parents, when you punish a child, the hope is that you traumatize them. Is that you permanently change their behavior from an aversive stimulus. It's just that people don't define words and they just shout them all over the place. They say Say stored in your body. It's energy. It's like no one even knows what the [ __ ] that means. Show me on someone's body where it's stored. Give me an x-ray. Show me where this No, come on. Like you're saying you're you're storing your emotional trauma from your father in your liver?

4:08Like I can just say words and make things up and get people to nod if I say them with conviction. It doesn't make it's true. And so you may have been fooled because sometimes it's more convenient to say you can cast your power onto this thing that happened that was outside of your control as the reason why you can't be successful because it's easier to say that than to say that I chose not to do anything about it anyways. And again, listen, you can do whatever you want. You can just keep wallowing in that. You can keep saying that that's the reason and wherever you point is where your power is.

4:38Right? But the only time that you have more power is if you say it's on you. Period. Because all of those things may have happened and they may have all been terrible. And what are you going to do about it? Right? Because the only Like no one cares. Like the world doesn't care. You care, which is fine. But like no one else does. And the sooner you realize that, the sooner you can start doing something about it. And so also, think about this is equal opposite. If trauma can create good things, then it also means that good things can create bad behaviors. And so if you win the lottery and then you have all these behaviors that happen afterwards that are negative, then was it good for you?

5:20Like we talk about these rich and privileged kids because it creates behaviors that people that actually make it less likely that they achieve things later. And so just think about what occurred and what behaviors you take as a result and separate good or bad from it and just think does it make it more likely that I hit my goals? It makes life a lot easier and then it stops you from speaking in voodoo and speaking and appealing to mysticism and magic. Like there's this this force around I have demons. It's like, "Dude, no. Like you had a girl who cheated on you. Okay.

5:53Now, what does that change about your behavior? I have trust issues." No, it just means that under these conditions, you are slower to give someone access to your bank account or slower to move in with someone. Comma, who cares? And is that a bad thing? And so, I'll walk you through a three-step framework that has been unbelievably valuable to me. And this is from Dr. Cashy.

6:17Logic, evidence, utility. Logic is what does that mean? So, you have demons. Okay, what does that mean? Define it in terms of behavior. What does that mean? Okay, got it. Now, how do you know that? Evidence. So, you say, "I have demons." We unpack that and it means that uh for you, you self-sabotage, which again, define that.

6:41Okay, it means that I show up late to meetings after I get into a job after 2 months of being on time. Okay. So, after 2 months of being on time, you start being late to stuff. That we translated from I have demons to I self-sabotage to that is the behavior that occurs. Got it. Now, I would say, "How do you know that?" Now, a lot of times people are like, "Well, it's happened." But when you actually look at it, you're like, "It happened three times over in you know, in my my last job." Okay. Is it really a a problem as you define it or it happened in those three occurrences? Okay. Got it. So, now you know Now, most times people are like, "I don't have any data." And you're like, "Okay, so then this is basically made up." And when I say made up, I'm not saying that's like you were a liar. I'm just saying that humans work in narratives, and a lot of times we add narratives, stories, to things that don't actually mean anything.

7:33But it's convenient and it's fun and we like talking about it, but it doesn't mean it's true. And so, then you move to the third one, which is, "And so what?" Utility. Who cares? Why does this matter? And so then you say, "Okay, well, this matters because it decreases the likelihood that I will be able to retain future employment." Fine. Then, what do we do about it? And so, you can walk through things that you have struggled with in the past with simply saying, "Let me define this in terms of behavior. What evidence do I have that this is actually true now that I've defined it based on these things? And who cares?"

8:06I have demons in the kitchen. All right, just as a completely ridiculous example. Okay, well, in my past I I've had bad things happen, bro. Like what? Like what occurred? I touched the stove and it burns me. Okay. Great. Now we have something. Evidence-wise, how many times did it happen? One time. Okay. And it never happened again in the future. Okay. What did that result in? I don't go into kitchens anymore. Okay. Now, this is good or bad? When you say, "Who cares?"

8:34it's in relation to what? My goals. Does you not going into the kitchen prevent you from achieving your goals? Well, if you want to be a chef, yes. If you want to be an entrepreneur, no. If you want to be a kitchen entrepreneur, probably. Right? And so, the question is just, "Who cares? Why does it matter?" And so, so much of our time and effort goes into explaining things to people that don't matter at all that you could literally just move on from and just literally forget about. You could get over that quote trauma by changing the behavior that it changed aversively. So, in this context or in this condition, I behave this way and it's not conducive to my goals. Great. That's good that you've identified it. Cool. So, what do we need to do so that when you're in the condition, how can we increase the likelihood that you do act the way that you want to? And then you start stacking the deck to start shifting the pendulum in your favor. And you start attacking each of these little problems from skills that you have, whether it's behavior with people or it's skills at work or with a relationship. And you just do it one by one by one. And if you do it over a very long period of time, you get better. I promise you. I'm saying this to somebody who I struggled with my demons. You don't understand, bro. Like I have stuff. Like, okay.

9:43But it doesn't help you. And it also doesn't make you look harder. It just makes you less capable. Losers talk about what happened to them. Winners talk about what they made happen despite it. Hardship is a reality for losers. To winners, hardship is just your origin story. And like I promise you you can use this frame. Like I was texting lately the other day, like the bigger the monster, the more epic the hero. It's the story that you're going to someday tell. When you're 85, you're not going to want more boring stories.

10:16Right? The idea is that if you're going through hardship now, that's the story that you're going to tell. And if you believe yourself to be the hero that you want to someday become, then the harder it is, you're like, bring it. This is my story. This is the Spider-Man getting bitten. This is him getting beat up by the bullies. This is the origin story. No one cares about a hero who never had it hard. I bought a lottery ticket years and years and years ago when I was in college cuz it was like a uh billion or something like that back back then. That was when a billion dollars meant something.

10:43Uh But I was in college and uh and my girlfriend at the time, I was talking to her and the drawing was that night. We bought them for fun. We bought one ticket. I wasn't expecting to win. But it was just a It basically I was buying it for the conversation. And I thought about it as like the drawing got closer and I realized I had this big pain anxiety cuz I was like, what if I win? And I had this moment of terror cuz I realized that if I won, that I would never be able to achieve anything that anyone thought was my own.

11:12And that thought terrified me. And thankfully, I didn't win the billion dollars. Um and I got to make the life that I have. And so, I think that I think Epictetus says this, but it's something to the degree of what a shame it would be for someone to never encounter hardship because they would never be able to see who they are. And so, I think that if you have gone through hardship or you are going through hardship, this is the opportunity to prove to yourself, not anyone else, that you are who you say you are.

11:43And you were made of what you say you are made of. And you can choose to allow that hardship to make you harder, to make you more resilient, to make you more persistent, to make you more relentless, to make you more driven towards whatever you want to do or whoever you want to be, or you can allow it to be an ankle weight. You can allow it to be your trauma, right? That is your demon that you're fighting every day. But the thing is is like everyone has demons. Everyone has hard [ __ ] And I want to tell you this frame that'll hopefully change someone's perspective, which is that your hard stuff may have been harder than other people's hard stuff. But if I take a human being who has never encountered anything, and then I poke them with a needle, that will be a 10 out of 10 hardship for them.

12:30And so I believe personally that humans experience pain the same way. It's why when a man feels disrespected, it hurts just as much as someone else going through another crazy hardship. And you know what? Even if that guy's white, a 10 out of 10 pain still feels like a 10 out of 10 pain. Now, could that pain be less on the absolute scale of worst scenario? Yeah, it could be.

12:57But also, who cares? And so my point here is that every single human being on Earth has gone through their version of 10 out of 10 pain, which normalizes pain across the spectrum, which then leaves you with the only natural thing you have left, which is what do I do now? And if you want to design the perfect version of you, the savage competitor, the gladiator at the end of the life that has the scars and the scraggly beard, but has been through [ __ ] has done things, and has and has realized their potential, what would you do to maximize the likelihood that you become that savage hero?

13:30Would you give them the padded lifestyle? Would you give them the immediate win? Would you give them the easy life? Probably not. You would probably put you through what you're going through right now to become that person. And so why would you resent the chapter you're in because it's a requirement for becoming who you say you want to be? Let's say you've gotten over your little demon thing. And when I say gotten over you just stop giving it power by saying it now is the reason that you can't be successful. Awesome.

13:59So what do you do now, right? So you got to start figuring things out. And that figured out muscle is probably the most powerful muscle you can build is just saying, "Oh, I don't know how to do this. I will figure it out." Why? Because I figured out things in the past and I can do it again. And if that person could do it and they're no smarter than I am, they have two hands and a brain, I can do it too. Real quick, if you're business owner and you're 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.