Joe Hudson: Effort Isn't What Makes You Rich, Do This Instead
CEO coach Joe Hudson tells Codie Sanchez why work ethic barely correlates with wealth, and what actually decides who gets rich: emotional fluidity, honest conversations, and a handful of good decisions a day.
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6 days ago
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educational
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57 · 43
Big Idea
The argument in one line.
Effort and work ethic have almost no correlation with wealth; what separates the wealthiest, most decisive founders from everyone else is their willingness to feel every emotion, including shame, fear, and discomfort, because that willingness is what lets them see and choose the better decision.
Who This Is For
Read if. Skip if.
READ IF YOU ARE…
A founder or CEO who suspects their own avoidance, of a hard conversation, a bad number, a conflict, is quietly running the company.
A leader who has been grinding on hours worked and wants to understand why it isn't translating into better outcomes.
Someone who manages people and wants a concrete alternative to one-on-ones, convincing pitches, or conflict-avoidant meetings.
Anyone who keeps repeating the same pattern, in relationships, in hiring, in business decisions, and wants the emotional mechanism behind it explained plainly.
SKIP IF…
You're looking for tactical growth or marketing advice; this is entirely about decision-making psychology and leadership behavior, not funnels or ad spend.
You want a five-minute framework skim; the value here is in a 75-minute conversation, not a bullet list.
TL;DR
The full version, fast.
CEO coach Joe Hudson argues that work ethic is wildly overrated: he has clients who work two or three hours a week and clients who grind around the clock, with no consistent link between hours worked and wealth built. The real lever is decision quality, and decisions are made in the brain's emotional center, so the people who make the best decisions are the ones willing to feel every emotion, discomfort, shame, failure, instead of avoiding it. He walks through the mechanics: the golden algorithm (what you avoid, you recreate), the no doctrine (ask for objections instead of pitching), owning a projection (the blame tool), and why self-reliant leaders eventually hit a ceiling they can only break by actually letting other people help.
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01 · Work Ethic Is Overrated: The Golden Algorithm
Cold open on the episode's thesis, then Hudson defines the golden algorithm: whatever emotion you're trying to avoid, you invite in through the exact act of avoiding it.
02:09 – 05:06
02 · Shame Is the Lock That Holds Bad Habits in Place
Shame doesn't change behavior, it locks it in place; Hudson contrasts a shame-driven 'should' with a want-driven, enjoyment-focused approach to change.
05:06 – 08:47
03 · Every Business Problem Is a Self-Awareness Problem
The place you least want to look in a business, or in yourself, is where the real inefficiency lives; Hudson's company cut an action-needed rule into every email to force structural fixes.
08:47 – 13:24
04 · Obsession, Not Work Ethic, Makes You Rich
No startup fails from lack of effort; the differentiator is decision quality, and decisions are made in the brain's emotional center, not the logical one.
13:24 – 16:28
05 · Enjoyment Is Efficiency
Fast isn't efficient, enjoyment is; Hudson's hiring filter ('what would they do for free') and the better-than/worse-than paradox he sees in top performers like Sam Altman.
16:28 – 23:43
06 · How Joe Coaches: Follow Their Agenda, Not Yours
Hudson explains his coaching method, never inspire, always follow the client's own wisdom, illustrated with a repeating-dating-pattern story, then runs Sanchez through a live 10%-more-enjoyable experiment (with a sponsor break for Busy in the middle).
23:43 – 27:55
07 · Owning Your Projection & The No Doctrine
The blame tool: whatever you're blaming someone else for, you're almost always doing yourself. Then the no doctrine, asking a team for objections instead of pitching them.
27:55 – 34:27
08 · Work Ethic Doesn't Correlate With Wealth
Hudson's clients range from 24/7 workers to people who work two or three hours a week, no consistent link to wealth, and why obsession-driven work outlasts prove-it-to-dad work. Then, what separates rich people's beliefs about money from everyone else's.
34:27 – 38:34
09 · Complexity Is the New Enemy, and the Hardest Conversations Build the Most Trust
Complexity has to be actively dismantled like bureaucracy, it never simplifies itself; then two stories of Hudson naming the one thing an executive team is avoiding, in the room, without judgment.
38:34 – 42:20
10 · Every Time I Pucker, I Say It
Hudson's practice for delivering hard truths: say it from an open heart, not fear. Includes his own origin stories, a friend who called out his lying at 13, a friend who called him a dick at 36.
42:20 – 47:02
11 · Why Self-Reliant Leaders Can't Scale
Self-reliant people learned young that no one would take care of them; the drive to be seen and cared for disguises itself as needing to be right, and letting it go is what turns an owner-run business into one everyone owns.
47:02 – 52:58
12 · Build a Team That Owns the Mission
Teach people to want the outcome, not to follow orders; stop asking if people are happy with your leadership and start asking if the goal got done; run experiments instead of chasing being right the first time.
52:58 – 56:43
13 · Maximalism Works
Hudson's biggest recent lesson: the best operators treat scale as nearly unconstrained by default, and most people are maximalists about revenue but minimalists about culture.
56:43 – 59:03
14 · AI Is Commoditizing Everything Except Creativity and Teamwork
As AI commoditizes effort and knowledge, the only remaining edge is how well a team makes decisions together, illustrated with a window-cleaning franchise that out-scaled competitors on culture alone.
59:03 – 1:03:30
15 · Most Meetings Suck, and So Do One-on-Ones
Anyone should be able to say a meeting sucks and change it; rotating who runs the meeting improves it structurally, and one-on-ones create politics instead of solving problems as a team.
1:03:30 – 1:09:03
16 · No Secrets, and Choosing Where You Want Diversity
Assume everything you say gets said to everyone, illustrated with Dave Ramsey's no-gossip rule and Bridgewater's filmed meetings, then a case for deciding on purpose where a company wants diversity and where it doesn't.
1:09:03 – 1:11:16
17 · The Leader's Happiness Is the Company's Health
The health of a company tracks the leader's happiness, not the team's; Hudson pushes back on the entrepreneurial-misery trauma-bond that treats unhappiness as proof of legitimacy.
1:11:16 – 1:15:33
18 · Self-Reliance Is the Ceiling
Closing argument: self-reliance can build something small alone, but nothing significant grows without help, and a leader who can't say when they're hurt caps their own company's growth.
Atomic Insights
Lines worth screenshotting.
A CEO who avoids conflict runs a company drowning in conflict, because whatever emotion you refuse to feel, you unconsciously recreate around you.
Every habit a person has failed to break for a decade is one they've been shaming themselves out of the entire time, proof that shame doesn't work.
The fastest way to find where a business is bleeding money is to look at the one thing everyone in the company avoids looking at.
A single company-wide rule, no email without a named person, an action, and a date, cut one executive's email volume 30% and raised productivity 35-40%.
No startup fails from lack of effort. In Silicon Valley everyone works themselves into the ground; the ones that fail simply made worse decisions.
Decisions are made in the brain's emotional center, not the logical one; willingness to feel discomfort, sadness, or failure expands the set of solutions a person can even see.
Enjoying a week 10% more, without changing a single task on the calendar, reliably produces more energy and more output than pushing harder.
The real hiring filter is: what would this person do for free? If that's not the job you're hiring them for, don't hire them.
The no doctrine: instead of pitching a team on an idea, ask them to list everything wrong with it first. People who feel heard, not convinced, actually act.
Owning a projection means noticing that whatever you're blaming someone else for, you are almost always doing yourself, which turns blame into empathy.
Wealthy people don't believe money solves problems; broke people often do, which is part of why that belief keeps money away from them.
Complexity never simplifies on its own. Like bureaucracy inside a company, it has to be actively dismantled or it keeps compounding as you succeed.
The two metrics for a good leader: are hard conversations happening, and are they resolved quickly. Teams don't build trust by being nice to each other.
One-on-ones create politics because they let people push an individual agenda instead of forcing the team to solve the problem together.
As AI commoditizes work, effort, and knowledge, the only remaining edge for a company is how well its people make decisions and work together.
Self-reliant leaders hit a growth ceiling because their drive to be seen and cared for keeps them trying to be the answer instead of building a team that owns the problem.
Takeaway
Effort Doesn't Correlate With Wealth. Decision Quality Does.
WHAT TO LEARN
The CEOs and founders who build real wealth aren't the ones who work hardest, they're the ones willing to feel every emotion instead of avoiding it, because that willingness is what lets them see and make the better decision.
01Work Ethic Is Overrated: The Golden Algorithm
Work ethic has almost no correlation with wealth: some of the most successful people Hudson coaches work only a few hours a week.
Whatever emotion or outcome you're most trying to avoid, you unconsciously recreate through your own avoidance of it, the golden algorithm.
A conflict-avoidant CEO doesn't get a peaceful company, they get one drowning in conflict, because their avoidance is what creates it.
02Shame Is the Lock That Holds Bad Habits in Place
Every habit you've failed to break for a decade is one you've already been shaming yourself out of the whole time, which proves shame doesn't work.
Kids grow and change constantly between ages zero and eight without any internal shame voice; humans evolve by nature, not by self-punishment.
Replace 'I should' with 'how do I enjoy this 10% more' and the behavior becomes something you return to instead of something you dread.
03Every Business Problem Is a Self-Awareness Problem
The place in a business you most don't want to look, the bill you won't open, the number you're being 'positive' about, is exactly where the inefficiency and the opportunity live.
After solving a problem, ask the second-order question: how do I fix this structurally so I never have to face it again.
One rule, every email must name a person, an action, and a date, cut a company's email volume 30% and lifted productivity 35-40%.
04Obsession, Not Work Ethic, Makes You Rich
No startup fails from lack of effort. Everyone in Silicon Valley works themselves into the ground; the failures come from worse decisions, not less effort.
Making five or six great decisions a day is enough to be incredibly successful; the leverage is in which decisions, not how many hours.
Decisions are made in the brain's emotional center, not the logical one; take the emotional center out and a person can't even decide where to eat lunch.
05Enjoyment Is Efficiency
Fast isn't the same as efficient. Efficiency is how much energy it took to get somewhere, and enjoyment is what makes that energy go further.
Before hiring anyone, ask what they'd do for free. If that's not the job, don't hire them for it.
The highest performers, including people like Sam Altman, wrestle with feeling simultaneously better than and worse than everyone else; resolving that tension is a recurring unlock.
06How Joe Coaches: Follow Their Agenda, Not Yours
Never inspire someone with your own agenda, follow theirs. Telling people what to do produces nodding heads and no changed behavior.
A person who keeps dating the same person in different bodies is replaying an unresolved childhood emotion, not making the same mistake by accident.
A concrete way to test the enjoyment principle live: without changing anything about your situation, what's required for you to enjoy this exact moment 10% more?
07Owning Your Projection & The No Doctrine
Whatever someone is blaming another person for, they are almost always doing themselves; pointing that out turns blame into empathy.
Trying to convince a team of an idea usually produces agreement in the room and no action afterward.
The no doctrine: present the idea and ask people to list everything wrong with it first. It covers communication, understanding, agreement, and incentive in one move.
08Work Ethic Doesn't Correlate With Wealth
Hudson's clients span the entire spectrum, from people who work 24/7 to people who work two or three effective hours a week, with no clean link to their wealth.
Working from obsession and passion sustains a person for decades; working to prove yourself to your dad or the neighbors burns out and rarely lasts.
People without money often believe it's evil, or that having it will solve every problem; people with money are usually just grateful for what they have and know it solves some problems while creating others.
09Complexity Is the New Enemy, and the Hardest Conversations Build the Most Trust
Complexity never simplifies on its own. Like bureaucracy inside a company, it has to be actively dismantled or it keeps compounding as you succeed.
The two metrics for a good leader: are hard conversations happening, and are they resolved quickly. Teams don't build trust by being nice to each other.
Naming a CEO's anxiety and fear as the thing destroying the company, in front of the entire executive team, works when it comes without judgment.
10Every Time I Pucker, I Say It
The more fear you carry into saying something hard, the more sideways it comes out; say it instead from an open heart.
A single act of compassion, a friend telling a 13-year-old Joe Hudson that everyone knew he lied and would like him more if he stopped, ended the lying outright.
Accepting an unflattering truth about yourself, instead of defending against it, is what actually dissolves the shame that keeps the behavior repeating.
11Why Self-Reliant Leaders Can't Scale
Self-reliant people usually learned as kids that no one was going to take care of them, and often that they had to take care of someone else.
The drive to make everyone see your perspective is really a disguised craving to be seen and cared for, and it's rarely the most effective way to get it.
A business stops being owner-run and starts being everyone-owned the moment a self-reliant leader stops pushing their own frame onto the team.
12Build a Team That Owns the Mission
Teach people to yearn for the mission, not to follow a checklist; a team that wants the outcome doesn't need to be managed into it.
Asking 'are you happy with this' trains people to optimize for your mood instead of the actual goal; ask whether the goal got done instead.
The only metric that matters now is how many experiments you ran, not whether you got it right the first time, especially with AI making first drafts cheap.
13Maximalism Works
High performers who think in maximalist terms treat scale as almost unconstrained by default; most of that ceiling lives in the leader's mind, not the market.
The same people who are maximalists about revenue and acquisitions are often minimalists about culture, assuming 'good enough' applies there when it doesn't.
14AI Is Commoditizing Everything Except Creativity and Teamwork
As AI commoditizes effort, knowledge, and execution, the only durable edge left for a company is how well its people make decisions and work together.
Culture feels less important when a tactic is quantifiable, like a specific ad spend and ROAS; it becomes the whole game once the tactic gets commoditized.
A window-cleaning franchise can out-scale competitors in an unglamorous, low-margin category purely because its culture attracts a much higher caliber of franchisee and employee.
15Most Meetings Suck, and So Do One-on-Ones
If a meeting's outcome is 'we should have more meetings,' that meeting failed. Anyone in the room should be able to say a meeting sucks and change it.
Rotating who runs the meeting each week forces continuous improvement and strips out the parent-child dynamic teams project onto a fixed leader.
One-on-ones create politics: they let one person push an individual agenda instead of forcing the whole team to solve the problem together.
16No Secrets, and Choosing Where You Want Diversity
Assume anything you say to anyone in the company will be said to everyone in the company; that single norm kills gossip and the politics it breeds.
Bridgewater films every meeting, including one-on-ones, and circulates notes on how it could have gone better, treating transparency as what makes a market, and a company, efficient.
Decide explicitly where you want diversity and where you don't, want everyone growing as a person, don't want low performers as a form of diversity, instead of pretending the question doesn't exist.
17The Leader's Happiness Is the Company's Health
The company's actual health metric is whether the leader is happy; if everyone except the leader is happy, the company is not doing well.
Every year, ask each person if they're excited to work there and if the company is excited they're there, and part ways honestly if the answer is no.
Founders have been trauma-bonded into believing misery is the price of legitimacy; wanting to be happy while building the company is not a weakness.
18Self-Reliance Is the Ceiling
Self-reliance can carry a business to a small scale alone, but nothing of real significance gets built without other people's help.
The more alone a leader feels, the deeper they are in self-reliance; the fix is realizing that everyone in the building is there to make their life easier.
A leader who can't say 'that hurt' or 'I don't trust you right now' is protecting the same childhood belief that they'll never be taken care of, and it caps how fast the company can grow.
Glossary
Terms worth knowing.
The Golden Algorithm
Joe Hudson's term for the pattern where whatever emotion or outcome you're most trying to avoid, you unconsciously recreate through your own avoidance of it.
The No Doctrine
A leadership tactic where instead of pitching a team on a decision, you ask them to list every objection first, then work through each one until the room aligns.
Owning Your Projection (the blame tool)
A coaching technique that shows a person that whatever they're blaming someone else for, they are almost always doing themselves, which turns the blame into empathy.
Action Needed Protocol
A company-wide email rule requiring every message to name a specific person, an action, and a deadline, used to kill vague, undelegated requests.
Pace and Spin
A biweekly team-reporting habit that separates useful output (pace) from wasted effort (spin) so people can see where their energy actually went.
Resources
Things they pointed at.
06:26bookHow to Make a Few Billion Dollars by Brad Jacobs
“Success is not self-reliance. Self-reliance can be incredibly successful at a very small scale, but you can't grow anything of significance without the help of people.”
Closing thesis, works as a standalone card.→ newsletter pull-quote↗ Tweet quote
Topic Map
Where the conversation goes.
00:00 – 05:06denseThe golden algorithm and shame as a behavior lock
05:06 – 08:47denseSelf-awareness as the root of every business problem
08:47 – 16:28denseObsession, decision quality, and the emotional basis of decisions
16:28 – 23:43steadyJoe's coaching method: following the client's own agenda
23:43 – 27:55denseOwning projection, the blame tool, and the no doctrine
27:55 – 34:27steadyWork ethic, burnout, and beliefs about money
34:27 – 42:20denseComplexity, hard conversations, and saying the difficult thing
42:20 – 47:02denseSelf-reliance as a ceiling on leadership and growth
47:02 – 52:58steadyBuilding a team that owns the mission and runs on experiments
52:58 – 59:03denseMaximalism, AI commoditization, and culture as the last edge
59:03 – 1:09:03denseFixing meetings, killing one-on-ones, and no-secrets culture
1:09:03 – 1:15:33steadyLeader happiness and the closing case for self-reliance as a ceiling
The Script
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Work ethic is way overrated. Wow. I know a lot of very successful people who do not do a lot of work at all.
Effort is not the key. Make five or six great decisions a day, you can be incredibly successful. Today's guest is Joe Hudson, one of the most sought after coaches who mentors founders from Mark Pincus to Sam Altman.
You'll hear the actual advice to get these billionaire founders unstuck and the most difficult truth nukes he drops on his clients that we get to steal. The best way to learn how to make great decisions is to to be comfortable with all the emotional states.
If I'm like, I can't feel this kind of discomfort, I can't be sad, then I am not going to see that set of solutions. If I'm willing to feel everything, I'll make better decisions. You coach billionaire CEOs.
What do you tell them that the rest of us don't get to hear? That is a fantastic question.
One of the things you drilled down on that I thought was really interesting, you call the golden algorithm. Yeah. Can you explain what that is?
So the thing that you're trying to avoid, especially in the emotion you're trying to avoid, you invite in the exact way that you're trying to avoid it. And so this is incredibly crippling for businesses, right? So if you're trying, let's be like a conflict avoidance CEO, which you are not, right?
But like a conflict avoidance CEO, they're constantly trying to avoid conflict and therefore their firms are raging in conflict and dysfunction, as an example. Fascinating, actually. So you basically become a mirror for the thing that you're trying to not have more than anything else.
How can you tell somebody is not conflict avoiding that quickly? Like how can you classify somebody that fast? That's a really hard question.
So if you watch the coaching videos of me online, so we have like a couple hundred of them, you'll see me be able to like read somebody's entire history with like a sentence or two. And there's a lot of stuff that goes into that. But an example would be, If somebody has like a line right here, it's usually repressed anger.
It usually means or a critical parent hunch or if they have it tucked by, it means that they got abused a lot as a kid. So there's physical cues, there's language cues, there's emotional cues, and then there's just pattern recognition. That's horrifying.
It scares people. When they watch me coach, it scares people. They feel like it's magic or something.
Interesting. You have a quote that I really liked, which is, shame is the lock that holds the chains of bad habits in place. Whatever you shame, you repeat.
Yes. What do you mean? The easiest way to think about this is to say, okay.
Think about all the things that you haven't wanted to do for like a decade, but you keep doing, and I can tell you something about them. All of them are things you tell yourself you should do or should not do. That's all shame.
And it's very easy to see that it doesn't work because everything that you haven't changed in the last decade that you wanted to change, you've been shaming yourself for. So what on earth would make us continue to do it? We'd be like, oh, but if I don't beat myself up, then...
then nothing's gonna change. But that's not true at all. If you like look at a kid from say zero to seven or eight years old, there's a huge amount of change that happens and there is no internal shame voice, right?
We grow and evolve by our nature. We don't do it because we're beating ourselves up. And it becomes really clear.
Imagine if you had a boss and the boss was like over your head and it was like, you shouldn't have done it that way. Why'd you do it that way? Oh, you could have done that better.
The way that... Most people speak to themselves. You would be like, I fucking quit.
I'm not here. What? I'm out.
But somehow we think we need to do it to ourselves. But it's really, really ineffective. So what is the way then to change something that you don't like about yourself?
Focus on your wants and enjoyment. Let's say I want to work out. As soon as that want becomes a should.
then it's something I have to do. It's something I'm oppressed by. It's something that, oh crap, I didn't do it.
See, I'm bad. But if every time I think about working out, I'm like, what would be the coolest, funnest, most enjoyable way of working out? How do I enjoy working out 10 % more this week?
Then I'm going to more like, if at the end of my workout, I'm like, I enjoyed the hell out of that. It's probably something I'm going to do again. If it's something where I beat myself up and then I did it, I'm like, shit, I only did 40 minutes instead of 50 minutes.
Why am I going to sign up to get my ass kicked again? Like, I'm not going to do that. Interesting.
Right. And it does work for some people. Don't get me wrong.
Like, but those are the people who have like a particular kind of it's not a should. They're doing something slightly different. They're thriving off of like pushing themselves.
That's a different deal. But it's but to beat yourself up for it is the ineffective part. Yeah.
My husband would be a great example of the, he thrives off of the intensity. Yeah. So if somebody's trying to coach or pep him up while working out, he's going to get out of here.
Right. Beat it. Right.
I'm perfectly fine. I like being miserable in this moment. Get off me.
Right. And he probably, if you listen to his language, he's probably not saying I should work out. He's like, I want to work out or I'm going to go get some reps in or whatever.
Yeah. His language is different. Yeah.
It's important the way you talk to yourself, isn't it? Critical. You also talk a lot about not just how to do this individually, but also how to do this in business, which is cool.
You often say every business problem is a self -awareness problem. Can you talk to me about that? Let's say you are struggling right now in business.
Something is failing massively. What's the first thing you should do? You should look at everything you don't want to look at.
That would be the first thing that I would do. There's something in the back of your head that you know is tickling you that says, this isn't quite right, that you're being positive about, or you're saying, it's great, or I don't want to look at that, or I don't want to open that bill, whatever it is. You go right there, and that's where your inefficiency is.
That's where you look. And that's the same thing with self -awareness. If somebody comes to me and says, how do I start working on self -awareness?
One of the first things I'm going to tell them is, look at all the places you don't want to look. Like that's where you're going to start finding yourself. You can look at it as there's that thing I don't want to look at.
That's a pain in the ass. Or you can say, oh, that's where the inefficiency is. Therefore, that's where I have the opportunity to make the most money or grow the most.
And so it's the same in the business. The thing you don't want to look at is where you're going to have the most opportunity. Internally, it's the same thing where when you look at that and resolve that, then you get the biggest unlock.
This guy, Brad Jacobs, I really like, who wrote How to Make a Few Billion Dollars. He has this quote that I love, which is, why would you get upset when you see problems in business? That's where all the money is.
Yeah, exactly. And so that's actually been really helpful to me. Every time I have a big problem in business, I'm like, all right, let's deal with that.
It's annoying, maybe in this instance. But man, the second and third order effects of this, probably all the money is right there. Yeah.
The other thing that, now this is more for like the people who are running big businesses. But the thing that I noticed there is when they have a problem, that's the first order. The second order is how do I solve this problem structurally so I never have to face it again ever.
And that is like, that's a huge unlock. A hundred. It's so funny.
We just, well, I was rudely late to this podcast and it was because I was dealing with this thing that I sort of had to deal with in the moment. And that was where we left it. I was like, okay, issue, problem, big, annoying.
But second thing. I think these are the three steps we take so we don't have to deal with it again. I don't have the answers to like how to fix this perfectly, but fucking if we're not doing these things next, we're idiots.
Yeah, I think that business people are, successful business people are pretty good at doing that with like the business phenomenon. They often aren't great at it on the human phenomenon. So I'll give you an example.
I was reading emails inside of our company and I just was annoyed because it was, I think this, or maybe we should do this. I think, you know, that one of those emails and there was like no movement and there was a whole bunch of people.
I just, so I, we have a structural solution at the end of every one of our emails. It's you have to write, no matter who you are, action needed. You have to name a person, anybody in the company, give them an action and a date in which it needs to be done.
So I have people at the bottom of our organization delegating to me and everybody delegates to each other. And it happens at the end of every email. And you're not writing an email if you don't have that.
Email reduction of 30%. Productivity increased by like 35, 40%. Interesting.
So one little action like that. And that's what I mean. Because you can think about it through like how do we prevent this kind of risk in the future?
But you can all think about it as like culturally how do we change the culture so that these, this. victim culture is never happening again or whatever it is. Yeah.
It's super interesting because you were here in Austin, Texas, now one of the tech really centers of the world. Yeah. And I happen to know a bunch of these guys.
who probably you work with. Now I can't wait to go ask them afterwards and say, you didn't tell me anything, but which of you fuckers works with him? Because I know some of you do or need to.
And it's funny because you teach emotional intelligence to some of these leaders. What have you found are the key characteristics that most people have to have in order to succeed? Obsession, without a doubt.
Like an obsession on the problem. I think something higher order than money. Meaning if your game is just to make the money, you're not going to be as successful as if your game is to be the best or to have a massive impact on the world through creating a technology or by helping a lot of people or by being the company that makes the best decisions.
Whatever it is. But you have to have a goal that's beyond the goal of making money. That's another really important thing that is there.
I think work ethic is way overrated, I would say. I know a lot of very successful people who do not do a lot of work at all. So at some level, you have to be able to make great decisions more than anything else.
So if you... make five or six great decisions a day you can be incredibly successful and and the way i think about this is i don't know any startup that has failed because of lack of effort right like in silicon valley i'm sure that there's like restaurants or whatever but silicon valley there is no place where they didn't work themselves in the ground to be successful so effort is not the key the key is like oh am i Is the leverage there?
Am I making great decisions? Interesting. And so I think that that's something that they need to be able to do pretty consistently is make really good decisions and understand the leverage points of those decisions.
So like a great investor, for instance, they might be a horrible board member and be okay. They might have like low EQ and be okay, but they have to be able to identify great entrepreneurs if they're a venture capitalist investor. They have to be able to identify.
If they can do just that one thing really, really well, they can be incredibly successful. How do you get better at making good decisions? So making good decisions is a really interesting thing.
Neurologically speaking, if I took the emotional center of your brain out, you would cease to make decisions. It would literally take you half an hour to two or three hours to decide where to have lunch. So we make decisions in the emotional center of our brain.
We do not make logical decisions, neurologically speaking.
occasionally there's a bypass. You can like jump away from a snake without going through the emotional center of your brain, but then it's not also not going to the prefrontal cortex. So that's what we're doing.
So then the question is, if we're making emotional decisions, how do we make the best emotional decisions? And this is where the rubber hits the road with emotional fluidity is that if I'm willing to feel everything, I'll make better decisions than if I'm not willing to feel certain things. If I'm like, I can't feel this kind of discomfort, I can't be sad, I can't feel failure.
If I don't want to feel that stuff, then I am not going to see that set of solutions that might have that as a risk. And I'm not going to take those actions. And you can just see your whole life is parsed by.
by that kind of decision -making. Everybody's life is parsed by that kind of decision -making, depending on what it is you want to feel. It's important to that.
Exactly. There's some science that shows that there's happiness and relevance. I think they use the word meaning, and it's basically everybody's wired in one of those two ways.
I'll give up the short -term happiness for the meaning, or I'll have the happiness, but I'll give up the meaning. They're prioritized in one way or another. I find that the more you get of one, the more you get of the other.
So I'm a both and kind of human on this. Are people who try to be happier as opposed to have more meaning more or less successful? Is there any correlation?
Absolutely. I think the people who go for a purpose or meaning definitely have a higher chance of success because they'll lean into the difficult moment more likely, which is the big driver for success, whether that's working out. I'm going to feel the pain or doing business, I'm going to go have that hard conversation.
It's going to drive more success. However, I think that when folks who are driven by meaning start to understand the efficiency of enjoyment, then all of a sudden they become a lot more successful. So what that means is if I had a really fast car, you would know it's not an efficient car.
right? But business, people often think fast is efficient, but fast isn't efficient. Efficient is how much energy did we use to get to the place?
And so if you're, and I highly recommend doing this experiment, take a week and say, how do I enjoy my week 10 % more? And if you're successful at enjoying your week 10 % more, I will guarantee you that you were more productive. You have more energy and your week after that's going to be a better week as well.
And so The idea that enjoyment is something that we should optimize for when high performers get that, when they actually experience how much more effective they are with that, it totally changes everything. So when I'm hiring people, I think about what would this person do if I didn't pay them?
And if that's not what I'm hiring them for, I don't hire them. That's very, very true because you have to have a love of the game. I was just realizing this with an executive that we have who really, I think at their highest point likes to golf and like be social.
Yeah. We hired them for a role that was not that. And I remember one of my executives saying to me when we did it, this will be good for about a year, but it's not going to be longer than that.
So if this is this gap that we want to fill for this period and there's a specific role there, then okay. But in retrospect, I'm not sure that's ever a good idea. And so it's really, yeah, it's really interesting.
Because it hurts the culture. Yeah, it does. Yeah.
You have to sometimes, you know, it is business. So there's these moments, but generally I don't make that sacrifice. Yeah.
You sit down with one of the leaders of the free world in many ways and some of the biggest builders of our time. Yeah. One of them being Sam Altman.
What is that like? With super high performers, one of the things that you'll get a lot of where you don't get it as much in the normal population, but you do get in the normal population is on one hand, they think they're better than everybody. And on another level, they think they're worse than everybody.
It's like both they're like trying to prove that they're not bad and something in them says, hey, I'm better. And it allows them to. And so that resolution, resolving that, that's a lot of pain.
And resolving that is something that's pretty consistent in that arena. Maybe 70 % consistent in that arena if you really want to do a major unlock. But there's that.
There's also self -reliance. Self -reliance is a huge thing for entrepreneurs and business leaders. And you can unlock a lot there.
But generally, we all have our shame. We all have our love. We all have our obsessions.
We all have our care. We all have our self -abuse. It's the same.
We're all humans. There's no real difference. Yeah.
So say you're sitting down to chat with someone. And if you want someone to really... change their perspective, to have a life change, to flip a mentality that's holding them back.
Is there a unique way you start these conversations? So I never have that agenda for anybody. So I follow their agenda.
So when I sit across from somebody, their wisdom is what I follow. I don't follow my wisdom because. No matter how smart I am, I don't know the next move for them that they want to do.
And if I try to inspire them to do something and you see a lot of people like big inspirational, you should do this. It's great. And everybody walks out going, that's fantastic.
And then a week later, their life hasn't changed. That is just not an effective way of transforming as compared to somebody saying, this is fucking bothering me. Great.
Let's go there. So the first thing I look for is what's the thing that's actually bothering them? What's the problem that they're having?
That's where we're going to find their passion to resolve it and enough pain for them to actually want to do something about it. And that's where we're going to start always. And then the second step typically is to.
is there's an emotional and an intellectual piece. The intellectual piece is to help them realize that everything they've been doing is not working because if it was working, they wouldn't be coming to me with it. And so it's to deconstruct the intellectual piece that's holding them back.
And then there's the emotional piece. There's something in there that they typically don't want to feel. And there's some pattern that they're repeating in their life over and over and over again.
And that's usually underpinned by a stagnant emotion. So if, Let's say you have a girlfriend who has dated the same guy over and over and over again.
He has a different license plate and a different name and a different face, but it's the same guy over and over and over again. And if I went to that girlfriend's family of origin, I can guarantee you I would find the remnants of all these boyfriends in the parents, right? And so what's happening there is they had a traumatic is one word for it, but they had an experience where an emotion didn't get resolved.
I didn't get loved. I didn't get seen. I didn't get, I got abandoned.
I got abused. And now I'm going to relive that pattern over and over and over again. As soon as they feel the thing that they couldn't feel as a kid, like the hurt of it or the anger behind it or the fear behind it, and they can fall in love with that, when they can say, oh, I can't wait to feel abandoned again, which is a weird thing, then that pattern of dating the same person will go away.
Yeah, because they're just trying to, it's like a cell trying to get homeostasis. And it's like, okay, here's this thing that I haven't been able to resolve. So I keep on repeating the pattern until I can resolve it.
Is there a process that you go through to try to get people to resolve those big, dark, scary things? Again, I don't ever try to get anybody to any place. So the first step is really just let them talk because they'll eventually tell you.
What they're struggling with. I just ask them to tell me in the first sentence. I don't want to fuck around.
Sentence one, what are you struggling with? Yeah, what's the issue? They say it.
And the way they tell it to me probably tells me where the unlock is. If you watch the coaching videos, you'll see that in the first three or four sentences, they've told me everything I need to know to lead them to the unlock, but they have to do the unlocking. Interesting.
When you're a CEO, you have zero time to waste. Like, that's what Joe and I were talking about. And that is the same spirit that drives busy.
Most business formation services, they're built to finish a task, sometimes not that quickly, sometimes not that efficiently. They just file an LLC, send the confirmation, they disappear. But busy...
I love because they're built to stay. So they help you start the process, then they continue handling the filings, the deadlines, and the state requirements that keep showing up long after the first year so you don't have to because you don't have time. So when you form a business with busy, it's fast, it's simple.
formation starts at zero dollars plus state fees so you can join the over one million entrepreneurs that have used busy to do the work behind the work and if you want to do that i have a special code for you go to busy .com slash cody to get started i got you so then base you ask the question they tell you then you follow the thread to in almost all these instances some emotional moment that they need resolved yeah so so there's either A lot of open -ended questions so that they can see.
The other thing that I do is I love experiments. And so in our courses, all of our courses, there's no talking, very little. There's just experiments.
And so if you can give somebody an experiment that they can do in the moment that shows them the thing in the moment, then that can resolve something for them instantaneously. Because they have the felt experience. A great experiment would be this, would be how do you enjoy yourself 10 % more right now?
Without changing what you're doing, just you don't get to like get up and stop having the interview. But like right now, what's required for you to enjoy yourself? A better chair.
I want better chairs. No, without changing the chair, without anything. You can't change anything.
You can't change anything? Except for your internal state. I'm happy.
internal state oh so i have to self what what's required well i guess i sat up more straight now i feel a little bit better um i'm pregnant so everything hurts all the time right now it's fine it's about supposed to be yeah um probably that's it laughing like i could just laugh at something that felt nice yeah are these Is that what you mean?
Yeah, it's just what is required to make this 10 % more enjoyable. But it can't be because I want to buy something else to fix it. Right.
Okay, fine. Exactly. And so then the question is, if that's true, if it's possible for you right now to make this 10 % more enjoyable by being more present or by sitting up more straight or by taking a deep breath or relaxing into the moment, whatever it be, what makes it that your whole life can't be 10 %?
more enjoyable without changing anything. You know what I think is funny sometimes about advice or feedback about emotions is that all of us innately go, well, I'm pretty good. but if you could talk to my partner, so I'm sure you get this all the time, you know, like it's fine.
I'm, I think I'm okay. But if you could talk to my husband, my wife, my, you know, whatever, whatever. So you do deal with these, like, I imagine sometimes stubborn, serious opinionated people.
Yeah. Like what are your mechanisms for breaking through someone or breaking through to someone who is really stubborn and maybe doesn't want to do this kind of work? If they don't want to do this work, I don't do the work with them, period.
I don't want to do it. It's like, why would I work with somebody that I can't have a huge impact with? I have a choice of people I work with.
I'm going to work where I get leverage, right? So there's that aspect of it. As far as tools go, that particular tool, the blame tool, like the one I use is owning a projection.
So typically what you can show somebody is that the thing that they're blaming somebody else for, they're also doing. It's almost always the case, right? And when I say almost always, I don't think I've ever not come across it.
So it's like. Oh, I'm blaming my wife for like not paying attention to me. Oh, cool.
So let's talk about all the ways that you're not paying attention to your wife or that you're not paying attention to yourself. And let's see if the problem is actually with your wife or with you or both. And that immediately opens up the empathy response because they can see that they're also in it, both for themselves and for the other, which is usually a lot of the resolution to blame is empathy.
So that's one. solution to the problem the other solution to the problem is that usually when anybody's blaming another person it's very easily very easy to intellectually disintegrate that that thing it's like okay so you don't blame anybody else for your failed your failed uh investment let's say right like you're you're like Somehow there's world forces, there's political forces, there's geopolitical forces, there's market forces, but you're responsible for that.
But somehow or another, the remodel of your mansion, your wife's responsible for. You're not taking any responsibility for that, right? You can deconstruct the blame really, really easily.
Interesting. Intellectually. Because it's interesting, I think, as you get an adult or into business, you see the same thing.
Like some of the biggest difficulties I have are like, huh. I see X, my executive or a counterparty or whoever sees Y. Yes.
And no matter what, I'm trying to get my frame across, but I can't. And so there's either my projection isn't working or I'm not taking something back. What do you do when you're trying to get somebody to see your perspective?
Yeah, that's a great one. So especially in business, I think this is a massive tool and it's a great unlock. I don't ever try to walk into a room and convince my team or any team to do stuff because it's super ineffective.
So I do it the same way that you would sell, which is basically, I want to hear all your objections and we're going to handle the objections. And every one of your objections, I'm going to mine for a better solution, right? So I call this the no doctrine.
So you walk into your team and you're like, here's my idea. Please tell me everything that's broken about it. First of all, they listen a lot better.
When they don't feel you're trying to convince them and they think that you're asking them for help, great. And then they tell you what's not going to work. Now, maybe they're right.
Maybe it'll change the answer 0 .001%. Maybe it'll change the answer 99%. But we're going to have a dialogue over that.
And by the time that's finished, we're all going to be aligned. So if I go and try to convince somebody, typically what happens, or if I see my CEOs do this. They could try and go and convince people and everybody nods and says, yep, you got it.
And then the action doesn't happen. Yeah, it's really interesting. We say here that like first layer is communication.
Have you communicated what you want? And then the second layer is understanding. Do they actually understand what you want?
And then the third layer is, do they agree with what you say that you want? And then the fourth layer is, is there incentive alignment? Like even if they agree and they understand and you communicated clearly, are they incentivized?
in whatever is important to them to do the thing. And if you don't have all four, things don't happen. It's a great way to break it down because the no doctoring, all four happen by nature, by the nature.
And it's, again, it's that opposite thing. It's not, I'm trying to convince you to get somewhere. It is, I actually want to tell you why we're not going to be successful doing this.
Interesting. Yeah, that's super useful. I love one of the things you mentioned earlier, which is worth work ethic.
And I am increasingly it's it's actually the subject of my new book. And I've been obsessed with it because, like I told you, I'm pregnant. And so I just have less time in the day.
I'm less efficient than I used to be. want to be really honest. I'm more tired.
I'm slower. I'm all these things. Yeah.
And soon you'll have milk brain. Oh my God. I can't even imagine because now I have pregnancy brain.
I saw you in the hallway and I was like, I'm not positive, but I'm not going to say anything because I want to check. So anyway, I'm sort of having to realize some human things about me. And this idea of work ethic is really interesting because I've always thought that you don't have to be miserable.
to build a really big business, that you might have moments of extreme misery. But writ large, a lot of the most successful people out there, I mean... Jeff Bezos talks about puttering around and having a coffee in the morning.
Tim Cook talks about doing a workout every morning for an hour, not responding to anything. And then you hear a lot of the hustle guys on the internet that are like, you wake up at 5 a .m., you suck, you don't have a Lambo, you should just keep going. And so I guess I want to know, you actually work with the biggest billionaires in the world.
What do you see as far as their work habits and work ethic? The entire spectrum. I have 24 -7 guys, and I have people who literally, I think, maybe work effectively two or three hours a week, maybe.
Yeah. So really no correlation between the harder you work, the more money you make. I think that there is a correlation, meaning I think that people who are obsessed with something are more likely to succeed, and obsessed people usually work harder.
I think there is a correlation there, but I think it's the obsession that's important, not the work, not the ethic. Meaning, and especially the kind of fuel that they use is another big thing, right? If you're working hard because you're...
I work hard because I would do everything I do for free that I do for money. I don't do anything for money that I wouldn't do for free. And I don't have to work.
Like I could be done 10 times over. Right. And so I love what I do.
And so I work hard, but I come from a place of passion and mission. Yeah. If I'm coming from a place of trying to prove myself, trying to prove myself to dad, trying to look good for the neighbors, trying to be like number, like have the Lambo, blah, blah, blah.
That, that does not last that. Like you better figure out a way to get rich quickly and sell quickly and get out. Because it doesn't last a long time.
You burn out, you know, and those people, what typically happens, you see this, they sell their company, they stay in their pajamas for one or two years, and then they beat themselves up for not doing another project, but they have enough money that they never need to. Yeah. Like that's what you see.
And it's not a happy life. It's not a happy ending. No.
Right. And I'm sure you've seen this. Yeah, definitely.
Many times. But I do think, you know, I've become, let's say, internet friends. I wouldn't say close friends yet, but I respect him a lot with Tony Robbins.
The last time I was talking to him, you know, I'm like, come on, where are you breaking your word? Like, you know, you talk about the most important thing is the word. There's got to be somewhere, you know.
He like had to think about it for a second. He's like, I'm honestly pretty good at it right now. He's like, but I guess the one place would be.
I keep saying I'm gonna slow down yeah and I don't slow down and you know he like didn't have a voice so he was like I was here and I was here and I you know told my wife that I'd slow down and I haven't been able to and I think that's because he doesn't see it as as work he's just obsessed yeah you know and when he he has a very different persona than you do but when he locks in on you you're like well I can tell you're really into this because this is You're here.
You're nowhere else. Yeah, that's right. And so that's interesting.
What have you noticed from really, really rich people? Do they have different beliefs about money and success than you find with normal people? Yeah.
So people who don't have money and want money, they typically have some belief system hidden in there that money is evil or bad. Maybe because they're... dad shows money over them or maybe because their dad was a power mom was oppressed by money or rich people are bad or something there's some there's some aspect that's going there they also have a hard time being grateful for the financial abundance that they do have and um i find people with a lot of money actually are pretty good typically not always but typically pretty good at being like i recognize that i i'm blessed here or lucky or whatever the word they're going to use is.
That's one thing. The other thing is that very, very wealthy people, money is not the objective. And so money is a way to win a different game that they're playing.
And so that's a different thing, I think, that's there. Wealthy people also realize that money is not going to solve problems. There's some problems it can solve, but it can create as many, if not more problems.
And whereas people without the money often think that once I get money, then all my problems are going to be solved, which is one of the reasons that keeps money away from them because nobody actually wants all their problems solved. Like nobody's like, okay, I'm going to press this button and you're going to be at absolute total peace for the rest of your life.
You ready? That is a little scary, right? What are you going to do?
Float around in this lotus flower or something? Exactly. Yeah, exactly.
No, we're human. We want the ups and downs. We want the drama.
So there's a whole bunch of things. There's a lot of things hooked into money. I'm going to get free.
I'm going to be happy. I'm going to be at peace. I'm not going to have to worry.
And people with money, they can't buy into that very much. And I think one of the most brilliant things I ever heard was there is this young up and comer with this incredibly wealthy guy and they're sitting talking with me and the up and comer was like, yeah, I just look forward to like the day that I don't have to work.
And the guy said, there's no day. You all, everybody works. Everybody works.
And this guy had plenty of money, but like just managing his money was work. Like just the house that like, it's all work. Yeah.
Isn't that the truth? Also, I don't think you realize until you have more of it. how much complexity gets added to your life with success.
So the simplest your life will be is probably however it is at this moment. It'll never get simpler. And so all you're going to have is added complexity at some point.
And complexity typically is some sort of problem. I think that complexity is... It's like bureaucracy in a company.
You have to actively dismantle it. It does not dismantle itself. Yeah.
And you have to fight against it. You know, a lot of these people, I mean, I always loved that, that George Clooney movie where he talks about only having the backpack and every single thing you put in it is an additional weight you have to carry. Now he probably took that to the extreme one way, but if you think about it in life, you know, so many of these people who become massively wealthy, they have 42 houses.
I mean, Peter Thiel's got a ship of mattress to all of his locations. Every time he goes at the mattress isn't there. He's upset about the mattress.
mattress. So, you know, you're like, huh, that's a lot to carry. Also, a lot of those people are so smart that they love having a complex game.
Yeah, that's true. Right? Like if chess is boring for you, it's really nice to play multinational, like six -dimensional chess.
And that a lot of them are literally just building a problem complex enough for them to be interested in. Yeah, that's a good point. This international mattress delivery.
Yeah, exactly. What about, you have to sit across from billionaires.
I don't have to do shit. Okay. That's true.
You get to sit across from billionaires or people who do really interesting things. Yeah. Like, have you ever had to have a really hard conversation with one or like, if I don't have a hard conversation in every coaching session, I am not doing my job.
Interesting. So what's the, what's the hardest thing you've ever had to express to somebody or what's a story that someone could relate to from those? Okay.
I'm sitting with an exact, I'll give you two stories. I'm sitting with an executive team. And one of the exercises that we'll do inside of an executive team is we'll teach people how to be triggered by each other.
So we'll literally have people trigger each other and figure out how to resolve triggering conversations so that they can have hard conversations easily. So everybody's like having a hard time triggering the CEO because the CEO had a had a penchant for getting angry. And so so everyone's like, well, you do it, Joe.
I was like, OK. So I sat down. I was like, you're.
anxiety and fear is going to destroy this company and everybody in this room knows it in front of the entire executive team but that that's like that's tuesday for me the other the other the other other what does he say he looked at me he's like yeah yeah you're right it's because if you're able to like pinpoint the really dark dark it's not just the pinpointing is i had no judgment yeah i could see him i could love him as he was I wasn't judging him.
I wasn't like bought up in the fact that I needed to change him. Interesting. Yeah.
The other great story was I was brought into this. It was like a, you know, whatever. It was like a $10 billion market cap company.
The CEO calls me in and he introduces me for about five minutes. I saw on your wall this great less words, more meaning. We aspire.
Yeah. And so he introduces me and everybody's kind of checked out, half checked out, kind of listening. And so I said, okay, thanks for the introduction.
I'm going to go around the table. I'm going to ask why each of you was not listening to the CEO. And then I'm going to ask the CEO why you continued to speak when nobody was listening to you.
And everybody cringes. Everybody cringes. But that's what, that's my job.
And what it takes sometimes. It's just the efficient approach. There's other ways to do it.
But in business, most people have time poverty. And it's nonsense. Their time poverty is nonsense, but they have it.
And so you have to work within that constraint. So you need to show that there's going to be a lot of value very quickly if they're going to continue to invest in you. And plus, I don't want to work with people who can't handle it.
Yeah, that's not fun. No interest. No.
How do you get comfortable with? saying really difficult things to people well one is you know for there was a while in my career where it just basically it became every i called it every time i pucker i say it like if i think oh my gosh i could never and then i do and and and very quickly after that i learned that the more fear i had in saying it the more it would come out sideways so the important thing was to say it with like a just a gigantic big open heart right And I remember two things that happened in my life when I was doing this experiment.
I remember two things that happened in my life. The first one was I was like 13 years old. Because of the alcoholic father and everything, I was super dysfunctional youth, had a green Mohawk.
I lied a lot. And I had a friend just basically come up to me and said like, hey, we all know you lie. And we'd all like you more if you didn't.
And I stopped lying. I just like stopped lying because of that act of compassion.
And that story helped me recognize that it's compassion what I'm doing. Like that act in that room is an act of compassion. They're all fucking miserable if that's what's going on.
Nobody calling that out is just like letting something fester. It's like looking at a big boil and not doing anything about it. It's horrible.
So that's one thing that kind of gets me over the hump on a personal level. And then... The other thing was a friend of mine was hanging out with me at some point.
And I was like in 36 or seven or something. He's like, Joe, you're a dick. I was like, no, but it got defensive.
He's like, don't be defensive. I don't have a problem that you're a dick. Like, yeah, just embrace it.
You're a dick for Christ's sakes. Like you're a dick. Who cares?
Like, let's just like, let's enjoy you being a dick. That was his approach with me. And I finally gave up the ghost.
I was like, okay, yeah, yeah, I guess I can see how I'm a dick. Like I could see the way, and what I noticed is in the acceptance of that, it dwindled. Like it allowed me to like not defend it and not defending it, reduce the shame, reducing the shame meant that I didn't repeat it over and over again.
And all of a sudden I was less of a dick by accepting that I was in fact being a dick. And that just like, it opened my heart and I realized, oh. And so now when I say those complicated things, difficult things, hard things, one, I'm paid to do it.
So it's like, there's an excuse. So I don't want to say, but I'll do it in personal life just as quickly. But the second is I've seen so many times where it's helped so many people, it's worth it.
I've seen lives transformed because of a well -placed sentence. I've seen careers change because of a well -placed sentence. And so like, what, why would I hold that back from people?
And yes, there's some people who get offended. It, it does happen, but it happens really rarely in my world now. Yeah.
Personal or otherwise. Yeah. I'm literally like with a friend, I'm literally with a friend walking this morning and they were giving me like those rock things that you're supposed to like increase bone density, but like such a meme, it was awesome.
And we're like walking along, we're having this conversation and then like, Just out of the blue, I looked at both of them. I was like, yeah, so the passive aggressive anger between the two of you, what's up?
Like that's hanging out with me. That is what it's like. That's what it's like.
And do you ever get it really wrong where they're like, what the fuck are you talking about? Well, those are two different things. I get the, what the fuck are you talking about?
And I'm dead right. And then, but I never argue. So if somebody's like, no, you've got it all wrong.
I'm like, okay. what am i missing and then you just listen and then i just listen because it's it's it's again it's not my wisdom it's their wisdom so whatever's available to them is the thing you work with it's not what's available to you it's really useful actually because i think in a lot of my arguments or or life if i think about it it's it is this like control dynamic trying to get other people to see my perspective be heard a fear of like well what if i just let them have their truth, then mine becomes less relevant.
And I know this is common for a lot of people, but it seems like you've kind of let a lot of that go. You're like, okay, I can have whatever frame I want and still listen to yours. Like what is the key to holding, to allowing somebody else to have their own truth and not letting it scare you that you can't have yours?
Yeah, that's a great. Great question. So this is particularly important, I think, for self -reliant people.
People who are self -reliant typically had a childhood where they learned that they weren't going to be taken care of. And 90 % of the time, they also had a childhood where they learned that they had to take care of somebody else, right? And in that is one of, there's many things.
There's things like they have a hard time asking for help. They have a hard time saying what they want. They have a hard time saying when they're hurt.
They have a problem with authority. They don't want to be the full authority, but they don't want to have an authority over them. Like there's a whole bunch of things that come with self -reliance.
But one of the things that comes with self -reliance is that there is a deep craving to be seen and cared for. And when you recognize that that drive to like, see it my way, is just that underneath drive of being seen and cared for. then you can start saying, well, is that the best way to be seen and cared for?
And you find out it isn't. Yeah, that's what I've learned. And it's a particularly like a self -reliant thing that people have that kind of push in them.
And when that unlocks, their business takes off. Because all of a sudden, instead of an owner -run business, it's everybody owns the business. Because as long as they're trying to push their thing, it's they're the owner instead of everybody being the owner.
And it's a huge shift inside of a business when that pivots. There is some things that a business owner can't let go of too, right? Like you do need to hold your power.
You have to own that. And like you could have a whole podcast on that. But I would never let go of like, this is our operating principles.
I would never let go of like, this is the way that we do business or this is the brand. like the the the leader's job is to own the playing field but it's to create a game where everybody gets to play for themselves you know and and as a team like both that like they get that but i will never let go of that that's the place where i asserting control is i find very useful and very very productive so it's like uh uber there's like five rules to uber right you get paid more if you work more you get You know, you get paid more if you're at a certain location, you have to get five -star ratings and you can't cheat your customer or something like that, right?
And they have this huge decentralized thing where everybody works and is productive and they don't have to manage anybody. That's the part you have to own. But if you get that part right, then the business just, because everybody gets to.
It's like a decentralized approach to your own business. And you can see this happen in Berkshire Hathaway, the Constitution of the United States, 12 -step programs, iTunes. It really works.
And it works inside of a company. But you can't do it if you're looking to be seen. Can I just tell you this?
I spent 15 years in finance learning how winners actually win. And you know what the takeaway is? Most people work way too fucking hard for the money they take home.
You know, I've built nine -figure businesses and worked with thousands of companies and realized the same dumb mistakes get made over and over by me too at first. So I actually wrote a new book called Owner Beyond that answers the question, how do you make more money less miserably? I've broken it down into 12 profit levers.
The 12 levers I've seen determine whether you print cash or hate your life. On September 18th, I'm doing something insane. teaching the whole system line and giving away a million dollars in cash and prizes.
So scan this QR code or hit the link below. I'll send you your free invite. I'm super excited about this.
We've never done anything like it. And if you want to steal my 10 ,000 hours and a lot of the lessons that Joe talked about, you're going to want to be there. One shot, never doing this again.
I always liked the quote that I mess up who says it every time, which is if you want to teach. If you want to teach your people to build a boat, don't teach them about ropes and nails and hammers. Teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.
And I think there's like a portion of that, which is like, how do we get them to want to be a part of this, to feel a piece of ownership as opposed to the TPS report is due on Thursday. They all want to. Like nobody came into this office today and said, I hope Cody's unhappy with me today.
Everybody came into the office today thinking, oh, I hope Cody sees that I'm doing something. I hope I'm seeing, everybody here is motivated to make your world easier. Most self -reliant people can't see that.
So they're all bought in on that. So it's like, it's already set up for that level of success. And so you actually have to actively stop that from occurring.
That is true. You know, it's funny that that is one. We have a member of our team and she's lovely and a stud.
But she would always say at the end of doing something, she would always say happy. It was a question to me. Yeah.
And I finally had to say, can you explain to me why you keep asking me that question? Yeah. And she was like, well, I just want to make sure you're happy with everything that's happening.
I'm like, why do you think that me being happy with us is the outcome that we want? Do you think that that's good or bad? I'm like, this isn't a sneaky question either.
I'm like, this is a real question. I'm very curious. Yeah.
And she was like, well, I think I just say it because I, you know, do want to make sure you're happy. I'm like, okay, well, like from my perspective, what I actually want is like, have we accomplished what we need to get done? Like, did we do the job?
What does do the job mean? Like we have a goal. We do the things we think we need to do to hit the goal, whether we hit the goal or not, not always in our control, but like we've done the things to hit the goal and in every single situation and me being happy or not.
probably should not be the defining characteristic of this. But, you know, to your point, I think as you become a leader, you have to start getting comfortable actually dissecting words, which can feel small in some ways. And recognize that that's the thing is people do want you to be happy because it's what makes them feel safe.
And so if you're not actually providing the leadership, but so. I'll take that one step. I don't really even care.
My biggest thing now is, have you done enough iterations? I don't really even care. Did we do everything to get the goal?
How many experiments have you tried is my big thing now. Yeah, that's a very good point, especially in the age of AI. Especially.
Because it's so easy to one -shot things or two -shot things. And that is done, but it's not. Every single person in our company has one of their...
goals is to do at least five experiments a quarter on their job. Yeah. I like that.
It's so productive. It's unbelievable. And everybody stays interested and you retain smart people because bored people, smart people don't stay if they're bored.
It's a good question. Like if you think about it this way to overly simplify, what do you think makes the difference between a good leader and a bad leader? Oh, there's so many.
Okay. So what I would say is that If a culture doesn't have the hard conversations, you have a bad leader, but it could be for many reasons.
And if they don't resolve those hard conversations quickly, have hard conversations and resolve them quickly are kind of the two things that you're looking for. If you have a yeller, you're not going to have the hard conversations. They're not going to resolve quickly.
If you have a conflict -avoidant person, you're not going to have a hard conversation. You're not going to... you're not going to overcome it quickly.
So there's lots of ways of being a bad leader. But if you're looking for the two metrics to determine if you're a good leader, it's are the hard conversations happening? Are they happening quickly?
And are they getting resolved quickly? If that's happening, you're a good leader. And that's what actually builds trust.
So you can't get a team of trust because everybody's nice to each other. That's like, that's what Google tried. It does not work.
Like you need to have hard conversations. that resolve into something better. And that's what actually builds trust.
And I believe your husband was Navy SEAL. I guarantee they had hard conversations that resolved quickly and there's a huge amount of trust inside of his team. Very much so.
And that's just how it works. If people go through the shit together and they come out better on the other side of it, trust is built in a way that it can only be built that way. You have a saying, build the part you understand the least first.
Yeah. What does that mean and why? So this is actually pulled from MIT Media Lab.
So if you're going to build a car and you know how to build every part of a car except the catalytic converter, most people will build every part of the car, then build the catalytic converter, realize it doesn't fit, and have to rebuild at least half of the car to get the catalytic converter in. So for me, it's what's the thing I understand least?
I'm going to build that first. And then the next question is, what's the simplest experiment I can run that will teach me the most about the thing I don't understand? So if I don't understand a funnel, what's the thing I don't understand about the funnel?
What's the quickest experiment that I can quickly run that I'll learn the most about? And then everything just becomes a series of experiments. I never really try to get to this successful funnel.
I just run as many experiments as I can as quickly as I can to get to. It's a great point because we say a lot here, like the faster you move, the more money you make. But I don't exactly mean that.
It's a cute sentence. What I really mean is like the faster you can have. feedback iterative loops that tell you something real.
And then you act on each one of those loops, the more you'll get to whatever the right direction is more quickly. Right. So it's the faster you move with real reflection with forward motion, right?
And so that's what we care about is like, every week in our company, and now it's every two weeks, everybody reports, this is my pace and this is my spin. Spin is wasted energy. If you look at your calendar, how much of it actually was useful?
And that's what we track. And just bringing that into consciousness is the difference between moving fast and moving effectively and efficiently. What have you learned from working with these huge power players?
So much stuff. I bet. What are the coolest lessons that you're like, I can't believe you paid me to learn that?
The recent one is just how well maximalism works. What does that mean? Oh my God.
There's so many people who are maximalists in Silicon Valley who are basically, okay, so I have one client who was bought by another client. Wow. And so he has a month of all this stuff until the acquisition and then he starts working.
So between that month and like two weeks in, he has orchestrated three other purchases. of the mother company of companies that he's always wanted to buy. He's a maximalist, right?
The company that he works for is a maximalist company. Like now we're going to do this and this and this, and we can also do this and this. Like that thinking is amazing to be around and to see how useful it is.
And focus is incredibly useful too. And it's, you have to be able to do both of those two things. But typically I'm just learning how, You can think bigger and it almost always pays off.
Yeah. And it's like how much of the constraint is actually in the mind. What's interesting to me is that a lot of the people who are maximalists in business aren't maximalists in culture.
Meaning, oh, I understand that I could do more and better in business always. There's always more revenue to make. There's always more companies to buy.
There's always more technology to create. My culture is pretty good. It could always be better.
You could have like the best culture in the world. And you know that pays off in your business. What makes you go, that's enough?
Which is interesting. And I've always been a maximalist when it comes to culture. Like, oh, we can make a culture that's just unfreaking believable.
But the maximalist in the material world has been really inspiring. That's been a big learning. for me.
It's a great point. I mean, it's interesting what you talk about. Two thoughts I have.
One, the culture comment's really interesting because I find if we were to make 10 reels and one of them was... how do rich people think differently? And the second was how to build a billion dollar culture.
Nobody's watching the second wheel. It's never happening. Nobody cares about culture until you're really, really successful.
And then I feel like people, and that's a gross generalization. There's a few who don't, but yes, mostly. But it's kind of wild that most people, and myself included, I was like, cute.
culture, whatever, let's build this, get out of the way. And then as you scale, you realize, oh, it'll be the one thing that'll kill us. It's never your external enemies.
It's not the enemies outside of the fort. It's the ones inside that you've let in, that you've created, that you've become a part of that always end up killing your company or your culture or your happiness inside your business. Yeah.
So we have this product and it's only for like, startups that have found product market fit who can scale to multi -billion dollar companies right but so they're in less than 50 people and it's just all about getting the essential culture really tight and so they come for two three day off sites and they do this monthly practice especially as ai is coming online what's basically happening is more and more capital is going behind less and less talent meaning the teams are smaller they're higher paid Work is being commoditized.
Effort is being commoditized. Knowledge is being commoditized. So all that's left is creativity and teamwork.
And decision -making, to your point. And decision -making and wisdom, right? This is what's left.
That is how well does a team work together. That's what that is. That is culture.
And so we're moving into a time where culture is going to become more important earlier and earlier and earlier.
You're one accounting firm and another accounting firm and AI is going to do all the accounting. Yeah. What's going to be the difference?
It's going to be how well that team hums. It's interesting. I think also people don't like it as much because it doesn't seem as quantitative.
So you can say like, well, if you learn how to spend money on Facebook, you can get a two to one ROAS on your investment and then you can scale and you can make your first thousand, hundred thousand, whatever really easily. It's like, yeah, that's relatively quantitative. There's easy to put that in a framework and Excel spreadsheet and you can run.
But if you really want to build big companies, you know, I think about we have this one company called Pinks. They're a window cleaning company.
That's not an innovative product set. This thing has been around forever. In fact, it's quite unsexy.
But the difference in why they've scaled to a couple hundred locations all around the country and why most haven't is because the two founders are really cool. They've got a really cool culture. They are meticulous about like you have to have, you know, your pink sort of washcloth has to be like cleaned and folded a certain way.
You know, the uniform has to be done, particularly the inside of the trucks have to be taken care of particularly. And so the type of people they attract to become franchisees and then employees is actually incredibly high for a window cleaner. Right.
You know, relatively speaking. And so they've been able to scale and it's not from. what people typically think about in business, which is, let me show you how I can close you faster than somebody else with this perfect line.
It's just not the case. So that's interesting. The culture becomes more and more important when you're in a highly competitive, low margin, lower margin business.
Culture becomes really important and it becomes really important if you're in a super innovative business. The places where culture can like, you can get away with it is if you're in a high margin, not so innovative business. I mean, you basically run meetings for a living in some ways, like, you know, basically nonstop.
Most meetings suck. Yes. How do you run a meeting that doesn't suck?
That is a fantastic question. There's so many things. There's like, I've literally written out 20 chapters of like outline, like how to have great meetings.
Some essential points. If you ever have a meeting where the outcome is we should have more meetings, that meeting sucked. That's, you know, um, recognizing what the meetings purpose is before you do it.
But, and then there's, so there's all the like kind of classic things that I don't want to go into the, I would say the mechanism that I, so, and one of the things we'll do is we'll take companies and we'll say, just send us your meeting and we'll dissect your company. We will tell you everything that is dysfunctional about your company from a single meeting.
You can see the whole thing. It is. so much fun for you, for me.
Um, so there's so many ways it's dysfunctional, but the main thing is if you don't like the meeting, change it, no matter who or where you are in the organization, everybody in the organization should have the ability to say this meeting sucks right now. And that's the quickest way to change the meeting because everybody knows if a meeting sucks and everybody knows what's sucking about the meeting.
It's true. At least half the room will be like, yeah, this is what's sucking about this meeting. And if you actually just give people the empowerment to be able to change the meeting so that they're more effective, they will become more effective.
And there's other little tricks. If I have an executive team, I'll make sure that each of them run the meeting. a different week that not one person's running the meeting over and over again and then their job is to improve the meeting each person who runs the meeting improves it and this is a really good thing because typically what happens in an executive team or in a team is let's say you're the boss then everybody projects mom and dad shit onto you and so they treat you they'll rebel against you like a mom or a dad or they'll try to please you like a mom or a dad but all of those dynamics go away when they're reporting to a team when they realize it's not, I'm not letting Cody down, I'm letting the team down.
And so the more you spread the authority through the team, the quicker it goes. So that's another like trick on making meetings better. But generally meetings should not be boring.
They should be super exciting. You should learn a lot through the meeting. And if there's a way to avoid it, avoid the meeting.
Yeah. Interesting. That's super, super helpful.
I mean, we, We think about this a lot and we are not, I always think we have failed in some way when we keep having to have meetings. It means we're not, that's okay.
It just means we're not good enough yet to do this. And there was a period where we tried to do no meetings. We're not good enough to do that.
That was a total fucking nightmare. And we found most of our companies that we advise that are small businesses have to have actually had a lot of meetings because the rest of their organization is not very structured. so other tricks never have a decision -making meeting that's more than five people that's a good one you at this point should never have one -on -ones probably or very rarely i'm so glad you said that i used to get shit for that no it's so good because talk to me about should you have one -on -ones if so yes or no why one -on -ones create more politics generally One -on -ones means that you're asking different people to solve the problem instead of the team solving the problem.
And you want the team solving the problem. And especially at this level of organization, you want your team solving the problem. So you're not coming in and trying to get one person to do it.
You're trying to get the team to do it. And therefore, everybody feels responsible for the problem. Yeah.
How far down an org do you usually go with that? Like, I don't do one -on -ones anymore for that particular reason. I also found that they were utilized mostly even by good people.
Didn't mean in a bad way, but utilized mostly to progress somebody's individual agenda. Yes. And just led to more he said, she said, as opposed to what we've tried to do is when you have something hard to say, you're not allowed to say it if it's about another person and they're not in the room.
Because by and large, whenever we have not done that, then you're trying to play telephone with two cans on a string wire. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Definitely.
We have a thing in our company that says anything you say to anybody in the company, you should assume you just said to everybody in the company and everybody. So when you say something to one of us, you, they have the freedom to say it to anybody at any time inside of the company. There is no secrets in our company.
What are like, when you've gone into these big companies, like I went to Dave Ramsey's and he's become a buddy too. And I, I remember he told me we don't gossip at this company and I was like, okay. And then I went around to a bunch of people in this company, not sneakily, but I just met a bunch of them.
I was doing whatever. And so I was asking them, what's the deal with us not gossiping? Like, that's for real?
And he was like, yeah. And then they would repeat the same story, which is how I knew it was true. And they would say, yeah, the first time that you gossip, somebody would say, hey, by the way, I don't know if you know this here, we don't gossip.
So it's just part of the company culture. The second time that you did it, if the same person caught you or your leader or your manager or whatever, you were fired. And so it was just like a no gossip thing, no gossip.
And I kind of loved it works for him. That is like his thing. But I love seeing that inside of companies because it feels like the best companies all have like one or three or five things that you're like, that is so unhinged and brilliant.
Like, is there anything like that that you've seen from big companies? Oh, I mean, I'm not involved in this company, but one of my favorite examples is Bridgewater. films every single meeting even one -on -ones and then that meeting it's not just film then the meeting goes out and then people take notes on how you could run the meeting better it's like all constant feedback it's that same thing we're going to get constant iterative feedback i think that's and that's based on the principle that he has which is transparent markets are efficient markets and this business is a marketplace and he recognizes the marketplace of a hedge fund everyone's trying to get ahead that's an example of of like an amazing an amazing example of somebody who's going all the way i think valve is also a company that does some like they decide their projects by where you roll your desk so everybody has rolling desks i don't know if it's this is past covid pre -covid but basically
The employees vote on what projects are going to. And this is a company that makes more money per person than Apple or Microsoft. Wow.
Yeah. So they just basically have a fully decentralized approach. Interesting.
And I think you can get away with like a deeply decentralized approach if you have those four or five really elegant rules in place that maintain quality and fairness, like the Constitution or the Uber. things that we talked about. Yeah.
I liked my friend Amjad from Replit. He has a, he had like two things that I love that he does. And one of them is I've stolen it, but one of them is he has an anti -sale on his recruiting page.
It's like all the reasons you should never join this company. Yeah. And I love that because a lot of them are intense.
It's like if you don't want to work so hard, sometimes, you know, you don't see your family for a while. It wasn't exactly worded like that. Probably don't come here.
Right. You know, if you if you believe in closed source technology as opposed to complete open source technology in every single way and you want personal accomplishments on any of this technology, don't come here. Yeah.
And those are aggressive statements. The way that we look at that, we do it a little bit differently. We're like, where do we want diversity?
Where do we not want diversity? I don't want diversity with dumb people. I don't want dumb people as a form of diversity.
I can see some companies where dumb people, there's a place. I don't want diversity. Everybody who works for us wants to grow as a human being.
And if they don't feel like they're growing as a human being in our business, then... It shouldn't be. It shouldn't be there.
Yeah. But for a business to really be able to identify this is where we don't want diversity and this is where we do want diversity. Yeah.
I think is a really critical thing for building culture. It's a good point. And most people haven't thought about it.
No. No. And these days, for so long, you weren't even allowed to say that you don't want diversity in some way, shape, or form.
You know, you would have been killed. Well, like your pink, it's called pink. The pinks.
The pinks? Uh -huh. There's no diversity in anal retentiveness, apparently, right?
It's like you are this kind of person if you're working here. And that's fantastic. Because why try to get somebody into your company that doesn't fit?
They're just going to be miserable. You're going to be miserable. It's horrible.
Yeah, it really is. Yeah, we found at this company, one of the things that I prize more than anything else you said in the beginning is like less words, more meaning. I really struggle with a super repetitive.
a circular conversation, not grounded in data or facts. And it sounds like, duh, obvious, except a lot of people communicate that way. And so, you know, we've had executives before where I'm like, you're actually, your output is pretty decent, but the way that you communicate is so inefficient for the company that this is just not the right place for you.
You're going to have to find somewhere else where you can do this circular. conversation continuously and not make me want to kill myself. And that's not here, you know?
No, but that's a great thing to know. I think that there's two things that you're saying in that that I think are really critical for CEOs to know. The first one is that the proper, for lack of a better word, energetic structure of a company is that everybody should be trying to please the leader of the company.
So why do I say that? If the leader is happy, then the company is doing well. If everybody besides the leader is happy, then the company is not doing well.
So, and it's the nature of it. It's like everybody wants to make sure that the leader is happy. Like that's part of the thing.
So that's like a really important piece. The other piece is as a leader, it's really important to be able to just be able to say, because that's what I enjoy. Like I'm doing this because I want to enjoy this.
And so. But I extend that into our company as well. So as an example of this is every year we talk.
If you're not excited that you get to work here and if we're not excited that you're working here, we're going to help. We're going to transition. And it's not like, are you doing a good enough job?
It's like, I want to come in and I want to be freaking stoked to see you. I want to I want to feel lucky. And like that standard.
it's just it's been unbelievable for our success but also just for my happiness the leader happiness thing is interesting because um i can't remember where i was but i was talking about the same idea not even about me about of our member companies but there's only one person that like if you remove them writ large your business collapses entirely yeah and it's you And so, you know, I think it's so important that people like you are saying this because a lot of leaders have, it feels like we've been trauma bonded over like entrepreneurial PTSD to the point where it only is fun if, or it's only acceptable if we say everything is miserable all the time.
And if in any way, shape or form, we say, actually, I want to be relatively happy in order to have endurance or sustainability in this. It's like, ugh, wuss, you know, like yuck. And so, but yet most companies fail because the person gives up.
the person in charge. And then all of your employees, what are they going to do? That's right.
So I love hearing that, especially from somebody that works with people who, by and large... Also, if you're happy, the company's doing well. Yeah.
You know what I mean? Like, don't you want your company to do well? I want to end on this question, which is, like, there's a lot of people that see themselves as...
I'm self -reliant. I don't need anybody. You know, people, these women, I don't need no man.
You know, like I can do this all by myself. You know, you're in my way. Just watch me.
I got this. Right. This is like very cultural zeitgeist.
And even there's a whole segment of the Internet I didn't know about called Elder Daughter, which is just all about how elder daughters are completely unreasonable and very self -reliant, which I am one. So I was like, oh, this is interesting. This is this is all through line.
But you basically say that. Success is not self -reliance. Self -reliance can be like incredibly successful at a very small scale, but you can't grow anything of significance without the help of people.
And the better you, the more you're like, I'm all alone as a CEO, the more you are in self -reliance. The more you feel all alone, the more you're in self -reliance. The more you can't walk into an office and go, oh my goodness, all those people, they're all here to make my life easier.
How about that? And they all care enough to do that. As long as you can't see that, you're in a self -reliance mechanism.
It means that you're having a hard time asking for what you want. It means you're having a hard time asking for help. It means you have...
you're not fully in your own authority and you rebel against authority. And so there's a lack of authority in the company. Often there's like, there's this kind of weird thing that happens there that I could go into.
It means that it means that you have a hard time saying when you're hurt. So that's why a lot of the CEO trauma bonding happens or is like, I'm miserable because they can't say, wow, it really hurts that you didn't do the thing that you said you were going to do. And I noticed that.
I'm not trusting you as much right now. And I don't, I don't want that. How do we fix that?
CEOs have a tendency not being able to do that because they're like, no, that to that way is going to be hurt because somebody like, I'm not going to be taken care of because that's basically where self -reliance comes from is this idea that I'm not going to be taken care of. That comes from childhood when you can get over that.
then your company can explode like so well, like explode is and grow very quickly because you unleash people to actually help you instead of having to manage everybody and tell everybody what to do and be like, oh, they didn't do it well enough, et cetera, et cetera. It's so good. I know I'm going to be going back to this episode, having all my leaders listen to it too.
Where do you like people to follow you the most? We've got YouTube. YouTube.
And it's just your name. Joe Hudson. Yeah.
YouTube. Yeah. If you want it, if you want personal transformation, the best is, is going to the YouTube and the podcast and the coachings.
Those are definitely the, the things that drive a lot of change in people. I get emails constantly of people's lives changing. Well, and I, I don't even know if I'm allowed to ask you this, but like, I bet you charge these guys a lot of money.
A lot of money. One -on -one. A lot of money.
I, most of what I do is I charge. Are we talking five or six figures? I charge a percentage of what we grow together.
Get the fuck out. I go by stock. What's the most amount of money you've ever been able to get from help?
Have you been able to make like seven figures off of your help?
I love that nod. That's a really smart way to do it. Yeah.
So I just do it. I just like if the company grows like that. I told you about the thing, the council, where we help people with getting their culture right.
We just take a percentage of the company. We don't even charge. So you're really selective on who you take because you're like, you guys better be good.
Otherwise, you're not getting me. If they're committed to their culture and they are in that 50 person or less company that has product market fit, we take them because those are the criteria. We keep it simple.
I love that. But yeah, so we just get a percentage of what we create. Well, we stand behind the work.
Thank you for being here with us today. Yeah, what a pleasure. We don't get to steal any of these people's upside, you know, but they got all your juice for nothing.
So thanks for being on this podcast. This was so useful for me. And I know they're going to love it too.
The Hook
The bait, then the rug-pull.
Joe Hudson coaches founders like Mark Pincus and Sam Altman, and he opens by throwing out the thing most business advice is built on: work ethic. What replaces it, in his telling, isn't a hack. It's the willingness to feel every emotion a hard decision requires, instead of avoiding the ones that are uncomfortable.
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Neuroscientist Emily McDonald walks Codie Sanchez through how the brain constructs reality, and the concrete techniques to rewire the filter that decides what you get to experience.
Codie Sanchez and Eric Jorgenson spend 62 minutes rebuilding Naval Ravikant's worldview from the inside out — leverage, productizing yourself, the four kinds of luck, and the quiet art of desire management.
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