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By default, we are driven by fear.
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But I don't think that it's our only option.
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We have all these inertial templates available to us in the culture to substitute for the real pursuit of excellence on our own terms.
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We really live at least from my lights in the most wondrous age in human history.
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It's so easy to get entitled and just to forget that this all needed to be built.
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The default is forget Wi-Fi.
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There's no airplanes, there's no automobiles.
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If you get a time machine, you do not want to go backwards.
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I think we need a more explicit picture of the individual human being as both the causal agent of positive change and as the beneficiary of that change. Well, hello everyone.
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It's Jim O'Shaughnessy with another infinite loops.
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Today, my guest Gina Gorlin, who is a clinical associate professor at the University of Texas at Austin and the proprietor of building the builders Substack.
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Also widely published in many of my favorite publications like every and others.
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Uh Gina, as I was getting ready to chat with you, I was like, I think I pretty much agree with everything she says.
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Really, I haven't been controversial with that. Cuz Yeah.
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there's got to be some fault lines.
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We're we'll find something.
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There's there's got to there's just got to be. But first, welcome.
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And and I guess let's set the let's set the stage uh with uh You say that ambitious people are an underserved tribe. Why?
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The tribe, that's an interesting paraphrase.
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Yeah, so in the field we talk about underserved populations that in the mental health field and the serving professions right generally and typically what we mean is that this demographic group because of disadvantages whether that are you know financial or physiological or economic social you know this group is an underserved population in the sense that they're struggling and need more support than they're currently getting.
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But what I have come to understand and believe about entrepreneurs and really ambitious builders ambitious innovators generally is that they have distinct psychological needs not because of a particular problem that they're that they come built in with not necessarily it because they're anxious or depressed or poor although plenty of
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them struggle with all of those things but because of the nature of what they're trying to do because of what they're choosing to undertake you know they're choosing to build a company they're choosing to carve out their own path as an artist and really try to figure out a way to make a living and develop a business model without selling
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out their creative vision like they're trying to bring people on board to a new initiative of which they're the only and final boss and you know where the buck stops with them and there are no guardrails there's nobody who's going to call them out if they've gone up down some BS you know garden path for weeks and weeks and
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and it's really hard and it raises all kinds of psychological challenges hurdles that become limiters and bottlenecks on what they can achieve and my field as a whole just isn't that interested in their problems because the way that the field identifies underserved populations typically is through the lens of what I call floor raising. You know, kind of who's
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You know, kind of who's struggling the most, who is the most severely impaired, which is incredibly important in its own right.
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And I want those problems solved as much as anyone.
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But it's only half the picture.
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And I think in some ways it's the less fundamental half because ultimately what will better serve the like the millions of people who can't afford therapy, who are struggling to make ends meet, who don't have the kind of access we wish they would have to the currently still scarce set of resources that you know, mental health can provide.
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The ultimate solution will be it will be technological, it will be creative, it will be top-down and systemic.
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And who is going to drive those solutions?
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Going to be the people who are out there doing the really hard stuff. It'll be the builders.
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And so in a way I think that we've got to address the challenges that face the builders if we want to help anyone at all long-term.
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Yeah, I love the author Robert Heinlein who says, you know, kind of throughout history poverty is the norm.
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And he says, unless there's an extremely small minority, which I would in parentheses builders here, and then he goes on to say who are frequently despised and often driven out of society the whole whenever some genius appears on the scene a confederacy of done dunces aligns against him or her.
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Why do you think that is?
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Why do you think because I think we see it in societies throughout history.
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It's not unique we live in the United States which some could argue is most arguably the most pro-builder society in human history almost and still even with all of the Yeah, for now.
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Um And here's something that you know Yeah, why do you think that is?
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Why do you think that there is this pernicious attitude that whether consciously or unconsciously opposes builders and creators?
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That's a great question and a big question.
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So I think I mean I think there are two elements in there intimately interrelated.
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One element is that and I write about this you know I have a piece called death is the default that I keep coming back to and will probably write a part two at some point because it just looms so large in everything else I think about.
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It's not the default to build and create and achieve and develop the the virtues, the creativity, the tenacity, the discipline, the independent judgment to be able to conceive of new solutions and see them through. It's hard.
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It's chosen and it's not just chosen once, it's a choice that make over and over every single day and gradually habituate to the traits of character that make that the more natural choice but all of that needs to be built.
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And it's not it doesn't happen by default and I would say for most human beings through most of history dating to the present day it hasn't happened or at least it hasn't consistently happened and that brings me to the second element which is ideology and culture.
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Ideology manifested and operationalized through culture and through you know systems of government and education and so on.
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Given that it's not the default, it requires nurturance, it requires cultivation and I don't think we've ever I think we we came as close as we've ever come with the United States the the Constitution and the enlightenment culture that got codified for the most part by the founders of the
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United States of America, which is why I think what you said is true that by and large America is still the friendliest to builders, but I don't even think they quite went far enough or were consistent enough or fully understood kind of like what are the ideological intellectual concomitants? What are the What are the nutriments?
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What are the foundational principles that are both kind of true and necessary in order to nurture and guide and liberate and empower human beings to build.
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And we could talk you know, we could spend the rest of this time just talking about what are those nutriments and what what do I think was missing and what's needed today, but they think that's a huge part of it.
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I think that there's a a whole found the immoral foundation, you know, and then epistemological foundation that's needed.
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Well, let's do that then.
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Um you say that the builder mindset needs to be applied across your life as a whole, something I agree with implicitly.
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Uh but explain for our listeners and viewers, you know, that ultimate yardstick and and why it's hard that the nutriments aren't readily available for people to take that kind of view.
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You you you talk about uh both the drill sergeant in your head and the Zen master in your head.
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Um but if you wouldn't mind, maybe enumerate some of uh what you see as missing. Sure. Thank you.
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Yeah, so I think there are kind of defaults that we see pop up across cultures, across eras of history that have attempted to provide guidance.
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It attempted to answer some of the questions that because we are agents, because we are conceptual beings, because we don't come with built-in instincts telling us here's how to survive as a human being, but we have to just like think and figure it out and learn how to do all of that.
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And so we need some form of guidance.
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But we have historically seen philosophical currents attempting to answer those questions.
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But I think in ways that have importantly fallen short of kind of the total picture and the the total human need.
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And one of those defaults really broadly is what I've summarized under this deliberately kind of stereotype heading of the drill sergeant.
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And what I mean by that is the whole class of ideologies, perspectives, mindsets on which there's some authority.
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Maybe it's God, maybe it's society, maybe it's your parents.
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But depending on the kind of culture, upbringing, system that you're growing up in.
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But there's some external authority.
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Maybe it's just like the intrinsic good as defined by Immanuel Kant, philosopher who tried to quote secularize moral philosophy, but still ended up with these categorical imperatives that just need to accept because of some really abstract deductive logic that doesn't ultimately apply to you or your life in any personal way. Right?
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So whatever they are, they're these dictates, these authority authoritative standards that a human must uphold in order to something.
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In order to be good, in order to get permission and validation to then do what you want, to pursue happiness, to go about your life, to go about your day.
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And except that that day never comes because there's always more to do to appease that inner drill sergeant.
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So if you think about Catholicism or if you think about I mean like socialism the way that I grew up with in the former Soviet Union in which there were also a whole bunch of shuds and dictates for of good behavior.
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No, don't be selfish, honor your parents and honor your community and be like be a good pioneer.
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There was there were two pictures in my first grade textbook of a good pioneer and a bad pioneer.
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We could That's a whole separate tangential story but I distinctly recall being the bad pioneer from very early childhood.
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Anyway, and then pioneers were like the Soviet equivalent of boy scouts, girl scouts in the US, you know, but kind of less benevolent.
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Anyway, so whatever that model that you're meant to live up to to appease to get permission from.
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It's like a you know, the test that you must pass in order to prove yourself a good person.
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That's what stands in for the kind of guidance that we need in order to figure out who to be and what to do.
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Because again, something has to fill that void.
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We need that guidance and it's got to you know, we get it from somewhere whether we figure it out for ourselves which is so excruciatingly hard that maybe a few geniuses all through human history have managed that.
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You know, think Frederick Douglass, you know, born a slave and somehow figured out how to teach himself how to read and sneak, you know, books and and friendships into his extremely constrained, you know, life and become an incredible builder and spokesperson for for great ideas.
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But like most of us are not going to be a Frederick Douglass.
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I think that's a very rare rare degree of kind of human you know, kind of intellect and aptitude.
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For most of us we need guidance and so we end up in exposed to whatever drill sergeants are out in the ambient atmosphere.
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Can be that from religion, be that from the you know, it it it could even be like the entrepreneurial ethos except that we drink it in the way that we learned to drink in whatever initial set of authoritarian standards we started with and so we still end up treating it like a doc like a dogma. Right?
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It's like thou shalt raise this amount by this point in the company's growth or else, you know, you're a failure. Right?
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It's like, well, who but is that actually Do you need the money right now?
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And how is that going to serve your specific goals and your, you know, specific values and needs?
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Well, no, but like Steve Jobs was already this far along by the time he was my like well, are you trying to live Steve Jobs's life?
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For your own But okay, so you've got the drill sergeant on the one side and then the Zen master is I think the culture's answer to the drill sergeant given that the drill sergeant has many clear disadvantages and costs.
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It sucks to be under the rule of a drill sergeant. We all know this.
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It sucks to be constantly yelled at and guilted and shamed and pushed along by fear and guilt and intimidation and there's, you know, this joyless kind of existence where we're always trying to climb to the next hurdle just to then be looking ahead to the next one for the sake of what?
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So that we can feel a moment's relief that we're not a failure.
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It's It's terrible, right?
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It leads to burnout and anxiety and depression and just every form of misery.
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And so then to try to cope with the tyranny of the drill sergeant, we're offered solutions like look, you can't really control your outcomes you know, past a certain point.
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Reality is it's a constant flux, it's messy, you can't control whether people will actually want your product, you can't control whether it you know, you can't control the weather, you can't you can't predict whether you'll succeed or fail or hit any given milestone on schedule.
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Ultimately, you can't control what happens, but you can control your attitude.
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You can control your internal atmosphere. So focus on that. Right?
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So this is you know think stoicism and modern type of I call it Zen, but it it's an umbrella I can term for a lot of different self-care and self-improvement culture kind of approaches that and for most of my field as I know it where the focus really is on it let's let's be kind to ourselves.
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Let's kind of lower the bar.
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Let's not be so type A, so perfectionistic, so obsessed with achievement. Right?
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That's just a recipe for disaster.
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Let's not define ourselves by our work.
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Let's really just focus on the moment.
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Focus on kind of what we can control which is so little in the end.
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And what my issue with that answer, you know, with that cope is ultimately that it is a cope.
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And that what it doesn't do is radically rethink the whole perspective of the drill sergeant.
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Why is this even the standard?
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Why should I even be trying to get straight A's at Stanford or whatever it is that I'm like what is that going to do for me? How will that serve me?
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What what's the ultimate benchmark, the yardstick right? As you mentioned.
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Like for what and for whom am I even trying to achieve this aim in the first place?
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And that's where the drill sergeant ultimately just has no answer.
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Like uh for God, for the greater good or sister like it gets hand-wavy, right?
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The kind of the farther you go.
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Whereas I think what we need and I have to attribute Rand, Ayn Rand with a lot of the kind of perspective background here and that.
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So maybe we can get spicy at least on that part cuz I know you know, she raises a lot of eyebrows, a lot of questions, but she's got this unique perspective at least from all the philosophy, psychology that I've countered uh it in the world, which is it's your life.
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Your life is the standard.
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Your life as a human being, your life fully lived, not just, you know, like being comatose and on an IV drip, that's not a human life, that's not what we mean.
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But like the fully active and engaged and joyful and flourishing human life that you've got a shot at building during this one ticket that you've been given to existence, you know, and where there's an alternative of like this or nothing, right?
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You've been given this chance at something, and it's up to you what to make of it.
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So, what do you want to make of it?
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That's the standard from my perspective, and again, you know, I have to credit her work and the work of a lot of other scholars in that tradition.
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recent tradition for It also is very similar to William James pragmatism, for example.
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Uh you know, the the greatest discovery of my era, I think he said, was that our thoughts can control outcomes, and we can change them.
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And and yet also I'm I'm a fan of Taoism and and some of the offshoots of Buddhism.
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And as I was reading uh The Death of a Default, um I I came across Steve Hagen's Buddhism Plain and Simple, in which he takes a very different attitude.
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He says, "You are the final authority, not not the Bible, not the government, not mom and dad.
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You cannot ask others to bear responsibility for your life."
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He says, "The authority is yours and yours alone, and there is nothing you can do to get rid of it, or shirk it, or escape it." Wow, amen. Preach. Preach, brother, preach.
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I'm all So, so I mean that's kind of like when when we when discussions get political, I I basically say to people, the only thing that I really am is fiercely anti-authority.
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And and I think that one of the things that comes out of your work, at least that I took from it, is that it it's not some grand conspiracy that societies have been run this way throughout history.
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It actually, when you think about it, it makes a lot of sense.
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It makes a lot of sense that the people who are the elites running everything don't want a lot of high-agency people mucking up their their wonderful little society, their wonderful rule over all of the people.
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You know, and they'll throw a bunch of, you know, everything with them is ought, not is, right? It ought to be this way.
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It ought to be this, not rather it is this way. And guess what?
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No one is going to save you.
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And so, I I think it definitely comes down to high agency, as you yourself point out.
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But that that can be really really difficult.
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Early in my career, I basically found myself like blaming somebody who worked for me about something.
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And then I had this kind of satori, which was, "No. No, it's not his fault.
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Ultimately, everything is my fault."
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Now, people said, "Well, that's crazy.
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What if somebody over here that, you know, is a colleague of yours really something up?"
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Then don't be so hard on yourself.
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Like, you'll be too stressed out if, you know, if you just try to control everything.
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Right, exactly that mantra.
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And you're saying like, "No, I'm responsible, and I want to be responsible. I own this thing.
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And so, it's on me to figure it out. Exactly.
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That's the high agency I'm talking about.
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If I can just go back to your point that you know, for most of that it makes sense that the ruling elite doesn't want too many high agency disruptors coming up and challenging their elite status.
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I think that speaks to a default that has existed in most places in you know, on Earth for most of human history, which is the rule of men over men.
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Or that's an outdated arguably whatever sexist way of putting it.
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If humans over humans, right?
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The kind of dog-eat-dog someone is in power and someone is not and it's a zero-sum game of who's going to get to hoard all the little bit of wealth that you know, that's been accumulated through the centuries and then everybody else gets kind of misses out on that little pie.
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And the fundamental shift that happened I think with the enlightenment, with the industrial revolution, with constitutional government, with the protection of individual rights, with you know, liberation from slavery.
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The huge radical shift that's happened is that by and large people have been both constrained and liberated from ruling over each other.
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And instead have been set free to rule over nature.
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To actually grow the pie.
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To figure out how to build skyscrapers and develop medical technologies that extend our lifespan by decades and you know, put artificial hearts, pacemakers into people and grow and develop new forms of agriculture and new forms of distribution and division of labor and
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you know, let's not even get into like the internet age and then the AI age that we're in now and all of the new forms of creation, efficiency, and just the quality of life that it makes possible for everyone, so that it's no longer, okay, well, rule or be ruled. It's what do you want to
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It's what do you want to build?
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And how do you want to collaborate with all the other builders where everyone wins from everyone's work and contribution, you know, in a in a kind of fully consistent realization of that vision.
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And you make the point very persuasively that it does start with the enlightenment which was essentially accept no one else's authority, find out for yourself, right?
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When they formed the Royal Society and the enlightenment in the arts was happening in Florence under the Medicis, etc.
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And yet those periods burn brightly, but they burn out, right?
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And and is that just a fundamental flaw in human OS, human operating system?
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In that in that like, I'm a huge believer I do too.
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I'm I'm I'm I'm a I'm a again back to Heinlein, he says most neuroses or psychoses are generally because of the unnecessary daily unhealthy habit of worrying about all of the troubles and sins of billions of people.
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In other words, like I always say, I try to find things to root for, not against.
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It's very easy to root against things, right?
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It doesn't require a lot of imagination or skill or yeah, you to poopoo something is probably one of the easiest intellectual exercises out there.
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And and yet I and I guess I can't remember whose quote it is but it's most people think they're thinking when actually they're just rearranging their prejudices. So good.
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Yeah, or yeah, sometimes I call it emoting with words.
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Right, what passes for thought for a lot of us a lot of the time.
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Rumination is a really my dissertation research in my PhD in clinical psychology was on rumination and how to combat unhelpful, unconstructive, depressive rumination but rumination takes many forms.
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It's not just depressive, it can be anxious, it it can be angry, it can even be well, positive rumination but where you're kind of indulging in some fantasy that's detached from the world and from action.
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And it feels like thinking.
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It feels like, you know, I'm getting closer to some sort of insight and I think you're absolutely right that more often than not it it ends up being about tearing down and not building up.
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Because building is much much harder.
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As we've been gesturing at.
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and yet I also find it fascinating that this is best encapsulated in a Louis CK bit about the first time he was able to use Wi-Fi on an airplane.
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And and he said he said, yeah, I I opened my computer, I'm on the internet and I and I turned to my my friend and I go, "Can you believe this?
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We're 30,000 ft off the air and I'm surfing the internet."
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And he goes, "And then it goes off."
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And I go, "What the fuck?" it. I love that bit.
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That bit sums up so much of the battle that I feel, you know, I am in royal standing as it were.
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Yeah, and it's such a default.
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I mean, I think we all know it. We've all felt it.
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Like now suddenly it's just part of the furniture of the universe. We now expect it.
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It's now our new default, our new normal. God damn it.
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Why is the Wi-Fi network?
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It's like it's so easy to get entitled and just to forget that this all needed to be built.
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Like this all The default is Forget Wi-Fi. There's no airplanes. There's no automobiles.
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There's no get ways to you know Never mind, you know, there are no phones. There are no computers.
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There are no air conditioning.
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I mean, the things that we take for granted today, right?
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And I I mean, we could go on a whole big I could easily go on a long tear about this.
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But yeah, I just the way that I raised my children who just are growing up with these robots you can talk to and ask any question it'll answer the question, right?
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And it's just so wild that they're just going to drink that in as just part of the nature of reality, right?
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It's just like the world comes equipped with these machines that just are always listening to you, ready to answer all your questions. Hey, Siri, play Moana. Yeah.
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Like that Somebody had to build that. And it could go away.
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You know, and it's a lot of work that it that's represented in these parts of reality.
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And I think that both a lack of context, like you're just bringing up, but also a deep ignorance about human history. Right? Yes. Like Brutish.
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Essentially, the the vast majority of human history has been I to quote Hobbs, nasty, brutish, and short.
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In other words, we human history you know, if you get a time machine, you do not want to go backwards. That's for sure.
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Because you can get a sliver in your hand from I I playing tennis on the White House lawn like Coolidge's son and then die of sepsis because there are no antibiotics.
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There are no antibiotics yet. Yet.
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I mean just this Yeah, or just basic sanitation practices, soap.
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Yeah, just the invention of soap and what a game-changer that was, right?
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Yeah, just so many things.
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And people the lack of knowledge of history, I think is one of the major bottlenecks on our resilience and growth as a civilization for all the reasons that you're saying.
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And it's just it's such a default when you don't have that context to just pine for the good old day I mean you see this everywhere in the media you see on both sides of the political out you whatever the current scapegoat for all of our problems, be it social media, technology in general, right?
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Or like the these profligate folks who just like they're they don't appreciate when we used to have strict rules and mores and you know, when you couldn't just get somebody pregnant.
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It's like on both like do you know what it was like back then?
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Do you know what you're pining for?
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Like are you actually are you know, are you pining for on the one hand you know, for an era in which if you happen to be born a slave, if you happen to be born a woman, if you happen to just you name it right then it's game over.
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And even if you're a member of the the you know, the ruling elite of the gentle like still no air conditioning, no cars, none of the things that would actually allow you to to build upon that pot of gold you're sitting on.
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Do Do you know what I mean?
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And so yeah, just same thing on both sides of so much of what I hear so much of the commentary about and the doomerism and the catastrophizing about the future, I think partly to it it would be very quickly at least checked in a big way, and the narrative would just change really quickly if people knew history.
30:58
Could not agree more because it it is very illuminating that we really live at least from my lights in the most wondrous age in human history.
31:07
And you know, you're you're talking about you know, the accident of birth and sort of the Rawlsian theory of justice where you don't know what you're going to be born as, but you got to come up with the rules at a time.
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What rules are you going to promulgate?
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That at least gets you thinking about, well, wait a minute. I could be born a slave.
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I could be born a member of a disadvantaged caste or or whatever.
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But the the other aspect of the idea is when you look at societies that like the United States that are based on the rule of law, that are based on property rights, that are based on intellectual property as well, one of the things that you see is those societies advance much more quickly, not just in technology, but in societal norms.
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So, for example, I was born in 1960. I'm 64 years old.
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In 1971, when I was 11, my sister got married and had to go to court to keep her maiden name because the rules of society back then were that the woman took the husband's name.
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In the same year, 1971, women, married women, could not get a credit card without their husband's permission.
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The list goes on and on and on gay marriage all of the advances that have happened so rapidly and I think mostly for the good in our society.
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I think one of the reasons for that is we are oriented toward the idea of stasis is bad change is good.
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Not all change is good, but guess what?
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You can fix the change if you screw it up the first time around.
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And and one of the things that that again, it's just it as a psychologist this must fascinate you.
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Why is the default setting to focus on problems to hand ring to to look at the very things that are making our life easier things like antibiotics, iPhone, zoom, all of those things and not only dismiss them, but also say that they're responsible for all of the problems we have today.
33:34
I I I get I don't get that.
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I'm I'm a huge fan of Julian Simon who looks at human ingenuity as being the ultimate resource. What do you think?
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I mean that I resonate very strongly with that sentiment.
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So just to go back a little I mean I have so many thoughts on everything that you're raising.
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I'll try to insert some space.
33:56
Let's see if we can you know find those fault lines and then you know have fun duking it out.
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it out. So to your point about Rolls for example, you know since you mentioned that there's this common observation that I probably share with Rolls that looks you don't know that the accident of birth should not dictate your fate
34:21
but your future this kind of idea of you know which gives rise to his veil of ignorance and to this idea that we should try to blindly uh re uh conceive of the ideal society not knowing kind of who will end up being within that society. But here too, you
34:36
But here too, you can see, okay, so what's the standard of the good?
34:40
Remember we talked about there have been all these different drill sergeants through history and that's kind of we're trying to find the alternative to all these authoritarian standards.
34:49
Well, so when you try to conceive of the ideal society, you know, say on a Rawlsian picture of society in the world, you're thinking about this like society as a whole.
35:02
You're thinking about each it's good for people to all have equal access to something, to resources.
35:10
Where are those resources coming from? Let's bracket that.
35:15
But we they should all have access to resources, they should all have the same sort of general, you know, that that like they should have similar fates.
35:25
Or you know, similar opportunities.
35:27
Okay, well, the what's good about that?
35:30
And good for the sake of what and for whom and what are actually the preconditions of human flourishing such that we design a society where everybody has the maximum opportunity for flourishing.
35:43
And I think what where Rawls kind of ends up is actually with a pretty collectivistic picture of like somehow it'll all sort itself out as long as we're all equal.
35:54
As long as, you know, kind of we're all held to an ultimately we're all regulated, managed according in effect it I mean he he didn't explicitly say this, but I think it was part of the foundation for like, you know, from everyone according to their ability and to everyone according to their needs. And then That's Marx.
36:15
That's Marx though, right?
36:17
That is absolutely Marx, right?
36:17
But I think that there are these kind kind of common currents of thought where if you don't have an idea of like it's the individual human being who's an agent who needs the freedom to build things.
36:30
things. And then humans are going to build very different things, and some humans will go much farther than other humans according to their aptitude, their their courage, their creativity, their potential, and their you know, and you know, a lot of accidents that will serendipitously allow, you know, some
36:47
people to encounter investors who really love their vision, and then they end up building something much earlier and you know, and scaling it faster than their peer over here who like takes longer to sort things out or has to go through a period of fighting off depression first or whatever the case. If people are
37:03
If people are going to go at different paces, they're going to grow to very different points in life, but if they're free to do that kind of growth, everyone is better off.
37:14
You know, that was just my picture of the world versus no, they need to we need to level the playing field, which is a kind of Rawlsian perspective.
37:23
And I think that that perspective has actually done a lot of the harm that has brought us to to today where I think it in wanting change, I don't think A, I don't think that we consistently within our culture value kind of constructive change over stasis in the way that you were describing. I I wish that were true.
37:41
I do think it's still truer relatively speaking in the US and in certain pockets of Europe and other parts of the world at various points in time as the cultural tides change, but I don't think it's sort of like consistently or or kind of dominantly true.
38:02
I think there's a whole lot of desire for stasis that I see in the culture, and there's a lot of and I think part of the problem is that there's still a kind of vacuum when it comes to like for the sake of whom and what are we enacting the change? And who are the drivers?
38:20
Well, you know, what is the mechanism of change?
38:22
Is it society as a whole?
38:24
society as a whole? Is it political innovation at you know, on the regulatory like what is the fundamental causal driver of good change of constructive constructive change cuz you know, destruction is also a kind of change superficially speaking, you know, which
38:42
will get me in a moment to your actual question about kind of fear and and destruction as a psychological but but to have a positive vision like a consistent explicit inspiring positive vision that we can then teach and and pass on and articulate to our children and our co-workers and our readers. I think we need a more
39:06
I think we need a more explicit picture of like the individual human being as both the causal agent of positive change of progress and civilization and as the beneficiary of that change.
39:22
There's no such thing as a collective good a collective like like society doesn't have a brain.
39:30
Society doesn't have it doesn't face the kinds of moral alternatives that individuals within that society face.
39:38
Society is a collection of people and there are you know, mimetic cultural ideological processes and you know, there are systematic transmission mechanisms that make things much more likely to occur to each individual person and that make each individual person more likely to develop certain skills or not to have certain attitudes or not.
39:58
But the people the individual people are still so the units of action and ultimately the units of either benefit or harm.
40:10
And you and we could talk it's sort of like the it's tangential to my main expertise which is within psychology which we'll now get back to, you I just wanted to kind of put that on the put on that kind of on our shared radar screen as like a background controversy that we can double click on. Sure.
40:30
And uh I actually uh think that you can take the premise of Rawls' uh veil of ignorance and still come up with a much better society than he did.
40:43
And and by that I mean uh if if you make as one of your base rules that everyone has equality of opportunity as opposed to equality of outcome, that could that slight little shift changes things rather dramatically. It really does.
41:03
if one inculcates uh the the almost hatred of taking a victim mentality and uh collapsing into learned helplessness uh as another guideline for that society, that society is looking pretty cool if you are have those kind of as your base uh rules.
41:28
But the it it also just strikes me as why do humans throughout history invariably, I'm sure you're familiar with pessimist archives, right?
41:39
Uh where where where they show like uh whenever any innovation comes, there's always the people saying this is going to bring the end of the world.
41:50
This is going to you know, so I call I call it the cult of Malthus. Yeah.
41:57
And you know, Malthus basically said that we're all going to die and Yeah, going to overpopulate.
42:02
I I just Yeah, we're going to overpopulate and again that gets us back to Julian Simon.
42:07
Not if we have a bunch of humans who are very uh ingenious at coming up with uh solutions and and it puzzles me to know end. Yeah.
42:18
Why this is a dominant ideology even in countries like the United States.
42:22
What what do you think psychologically speaking? Good. Thank you.
42:27
So getting back to yeah to the kind of individual psychological unit of analysis which is you know where I'm best where where I'm most familiar.
42:39
Our fight or flight system right our kind of flinching avoidance or escape of threat is the part of our psychological mechanism that we share with all the other mammals and the and animal kingdoms right from which we evolve.
43:03
And it doesn't take much understanding vision creative you know context historical of the sort we were just talking about to flinch and fear from a stimulus that is vaguely unfamiliar from a stimulus that we you know aren't quite sure
43:25
like what intentions it has for us or what to do with right it's sort of like it's the most basic you know babies have it already right it's like babies will cry at loud noises and will flinch from it from certain kinds of like sudden threatening
43:41
it movements right and what we can build on top of that is thanks to this incredible cognitive apparatus this higher order reasoning apparatus that we we come equipped with is a conception of a future a conception of higher order goals toward which we can
44:05
strive and build where we can imagine causal relationships among events and actions that haven't yet occurred, and we can then act upon that what what Aristotle called kind of final cause, the conception of an end, and we can choose those ends. We can make them We can make them up.
44:24
And then we can rearrange reality in order to enact them.
44:27
But all of that has to be figured out, has to be built.
44:33
It's conscious voluntary uh thought that depends on the thinking we've done today.
44:41
And depends on like to be able to see into the future more than, you know, as I watch my kids grow up.
44:45
I have a 1-year-old and a 4-year-old.
44:47
Like and seeing my 4-year-old's sense of time gradually uh stretch from like a minute from now to an hour or to a day to a week.
44:56
Like now she can even look forward to something that's going to happen in a month.
45:00
You know, for over a month we were looking forward to the day we would go to Disneyland, and I could actually reason with her about look, we're going to get a chance to try this type of candy when we get to Disneyland.
45:12
And so if you do all the things now that will help us get packed and, you know, get ready to go, like this will be part of the reward.
45:18
We will get to have this experience.
45:20
But to get there she already needs to have formed a whole bunch of pretty sophisticated concepts of like places that people have designed for children to enjoy, right?
45:33
Like to even be able to have that kind of to be able to imagine something that I know she's seen pictures of the castle and of the characters.
45:40
But to understand like there are imaginary characters who are different from real people and about whom we have these shared stories that we tell.
45:48
And at this magical place called Disneyland there are people dressed up in costumes who are pretending to be those characters.
45:53
Like there's so much knowledge, and every time she thinks about it like she's got to be able to marshal all that knowledge and sort of like call upon the the conceptual framework, the schema, you know, that she's built to date.
46:08
But, it's so easy to kind of like lose sight of all that.
46:11
Like, especially if she's tired, if she's cranky, if she's upset about something, and just get so unconsolably distraught over the fact that she thought she'd get two bananas and she can only have one, you know, like whatever it is in the moment.
46:28
Or wait, wait, Mommy's not going to do bedtime tonight?
46:30
You know, like the thing right in front of her that gets her upset, and then I see like that conceptual system kind of shut off and she goes into default mode, she goes into autopilot, and okay, all bets are off.
46:42
There's no context, there's no putting things in perspective, there's no like delayed gratification, you know, it's just What? Like, bad, bad, bad.
46:50
I want this and I can't have it now.
46:55
And I feel like that's such a useful model for them to think about like as adults, when we get all in about the latest social media development that, you know, somehow induces panic in us, right?
47:06
And we just latch on to the latest the latest threat, the latest new, unfamiliar thing, and we just let our fight or flight response run away with itself.
47:20
It's a default, and it's easy, and it will kick in to the extent that we're not really taking ownership of our thought processes, which gets harder and harder the more sophisticated they get.
47:34
You know, and so as adults, like, and sometimes it's not just hard from like an effort will sample, but also it might be really painful, scary, to the extent that part of what we would need to grapple is like, so wait, my whole political worldview might be wrong?
47:44
Or, you know, so wait, but does this mean I have to disagree with all my friends about this does this mean I don't even understand this issue and am I going to get ostracized by all my colleagues because now suddenly I'm answering I'm asking the wrong question about climate change or I'm like daring to raise a flag that like wait, but maybe we can use this technology in some way that actually students could benefit.
48:09
Like what if it could aid their learning?
48:11
You know, am I going to just be a pariah who gets laughed or that gets so much easier just to go along with the crowd and just to be mad about everything.
48:20
And so I think it you know, that same fight or flight response it's always there as a default and it kicks in the moment that we forget to or sort of semi-intentionally renege on that conscious control of our thinking.
48:39
So uh we increasingly see sort of uh larger and larger groups of people having to stay in the theme of your daughter uh continual toddler tantrums uh about uh about much of what they see in the world.
48:56
To the fight or flight, I would add another F and that is freeze.
49:01
I think that I think that um human uh operating system, human OS, is basically driven by emotions and I think that the king of the emotions that drive it is fear.
49:14
Specifically fear of new things, novel fears.
49:20
And Yeah, so can I add my own small detail that I would say all of that is true by default.
49:27
I would say that by default we are driven by fear.
49:30
But I don't think that it's our only option. But yes, please go on.
49:34
And you have nicely segued to the question that I was going to ask, which is you say that builders are not born, they're made. Yes.
49:45
So walk me through that if if we assume uh that uh, we're right.
49:50
And of course we could be wrong.
49:52
I could be totally full of here.
49:53
But, if we assume that we're right and that, uh, human nature is, uh, governed by emotions, the governing emotion, the one that will rule all of them is fear.
50:07
How do you work with people and create builders as opposed to another school of thought is that they're born, not made? Yeah.
50:18
So, I think it's really really important here to differentiate my perspective here a little bit because I think it's actually a really dominant and very reasonable kind of default perspective to to kind of see human behavior through the lens of fear and avoidance.
50:39
And much of it, in fact, is fear motivated and we can, you know, we see it everywhere.
50:46
And and what I think then happens is that we generalize from this default.
50:51
That that I think like much of my field, much of psychological research, it describes how humans behave by default.
50:57
Because, you know, you collect a bunch of college students from psych 101 typically and you run the same study on them where you get them to lie to themselves or lie to the researcher or, you know, you put them in an state of dissonance or conflict and then they make up some BS story to relieve their conflict and not have to feel bad anymore.
51:18
And they say, "See, here's human nature.
51:20
We're fear driven, you know, we're we're just constantly trying to feel good about ourselves and feel safe."
51:27
And I think the problem with that inference is that we're inferring from a default to a norm and that to an optimal state of affairs versus realizing that we aren't constrained by our defaults.
51:49
Really that like the unique thing about human beings, about human nature on my view, right, is that we have agency.
51:58
And part of what that means is we have the agency to build motivations for ourselves and actually feel and be excited for and understand in a really visceral way and pursue positive visions for what we want to build, for who we want to be, for what experiences we want to have.
52:22
And actually that that's an alternative to being driven by fear.
52:25
We can be driven by love.
52:29
And that's fundamentally different.
52:29
And not just different, it's actually more the the distinctly human way to live.
52:36
It's the ideal, but also it's I would say a it's the norm in the sense of like healthy human functioning.
52:41
Is to be moving toward things, is to be anticipating and excitedly awaiting, but also, you know, acting to bring about things.
52:51
And coming back to my example of the four-year-old, she when thinking about Disneyland and when anticipating all the exciting things she's going to do, she's not fear-driven in all those moments.
53:04
She's very much she's like building a conception of what that day will be like.
53:08
And then when we were there, it was really interesting to see how fear and and curiosity, yeah, a fear and a kind of love, excitement, valuing played together within her soul.
53:22
Because, for example, she got really scared of the first ride we went on, the Snow White ride, because there's this really creepy, you know, like robot queen who makes the poison apple and then you see the apple like squirming around with deadly worms inside and you see all these ghouls and yeah, she didn't expect it to be that scary and I didn't prep her for it.
53:43
I didn't remember what the ride was like and afterwards she said, "Okay, no more bad guys.
53:47
I don't want to go on rides with bad guys."
53:50
And and then we ended up going on It's a Small World three times partly because sure no bad guys, but oh out of all the rides without bad guys, she specifically preferred that ride because she really liked the song.
54:03
And she really liked the dolls and the colors and the variety of different animals that she could name and recognize.
54:11
Which has nothing to do with fear.
54:11
It's very much about like her interests which are developing in pretty distinctive ways and things that she resonates with.
54:17
And then she worked through her fear toward the end of the day by putting into perspective, wait, these are dolls, so they're not She asked me questions like, "Mommy, can the dolls see us?"
54:30
No, sweetie, the dolls are not alive. They can't see anything.
54:32
They can't hear anything. Okay.
54:36
And so there are there any actual are the bad guys real?
54:39
Like she asked me a whole bunch of questions to put it into perspective.
54:42
And then she chose to go on the Pirates ride which I'd been like selling to her the whole day cuz come on, this one really cool ride you got to go on.
54:50
And then she went on it and she loved it and she said, "Mommy, that wasn't actually scary.
54:54
But that turn actually They're actually mostly good guys."
54:58
And she had so many things to say about like that's fear based motivation.
55:00
Like love one out over fear for her that day and my hopes for her in her life is that that continues to be her norm.
55:11
You know, that she works through the fears and ultimately she forms and moves toward interests and curiosities that drives her forward and like that's the real motivational thrust of her life.
55:27
Does this answer your original question? Like I moved far away.
55:30
No, that's okay because I I'm still perplexed.
55:33
I I By the way, I agree 100% with you.
55:37
As I said earlier, um everything that I try to work on or create is something I'm rooting for, not something I'm I'm rooting against.
55:47
And I kind of think that, you know, the opposite of courage is cowardice, it's conformity, right?
55:55
And essentially, uh and Anais Nin's great quote, "Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage."
56:04
And and again, another favorite of mine, Terence McKenna, "Nature loves courage.
56:08
Dream the impossible dream, and the world will not grind you under."
56:10
So, I I subscribe to all of those maxims, but I'm wondering around the question of are builders born, right? Or are they made?
56:22
And I know that you have a specific way that you address helping make builders, and I'd like you to go through that with me. Thank you. Yes.
56:33
Thank you for bringing me back to the main target.
56:35
So, I think that they're made in the real in a few different senses, but the most important one being, you've got to learn how to be courageous.
56:49
You know, the thing that you were just describing.
56:52
Wait, courage is not just like you flip on a switch.
56:55
Courage requires, yeah, there's a reason to be courageous, and to be able to conceive of a reason, and to be able to hold on to that reason against all the resistance of your own fears, all the resistance of people's disagreement and uh in opposition to you.
57:10
You actually you've got to have developed virtues and also knowledge that allows you to see into the future, it allows you to imagine real, plausible, credible, credible to your own mind, and you know, like actually credible kind of reality, possibilities and that you distinguish from fantasies, right?
57:34
Because it's also easy to courageously jump off a ledge that actually will just kill you, right?
57:41
And plenty of people have done plenty of quote-unquote courageous but actually just impulsive self-destructive things.
57:46
self-destructive things. And to be able to tell the difference like, "No, I have a scientific basis for believing that actually what looks like, you know, a 50-ft drop because I have this thing I've created that is a parachute and
58:00
I've tested it out and I've done simulations on it, you know, and I understand the physical mechanics of the you know, I'm not going to be able to describe it competently, you know, like the way that the air will push back on you know, on gravity. Like because I understand
58:13
Like because I understand all that I'm jumping I'm making an informed choice based on independent judgment that I can trust in that actually I'm not going to fall, I'm going to float, you know, or I'm going to I'm going to be able to get places faster because I'm you know, I've invented this new form of travel.
58:34
new form of travel. And boy, has there been a lot of work, a lot of disciplined, you know, iteration through mistakes and failures and a lot of building of mental models, all of which for which I've needed to be able to do things like
58:51
wait, do things like, you know, make causal connections and form complex first principles judgments that I couldn't check my work against somebody else's you know, answer key because I'm the first one who's figuring this out or because you know, people disagree with me. So at the end of the day, I've got
59:06
So at the end of the day, I've got to make the call whether this is at least a plausible hypothesis, a risk worth taking.
59:12
And I've done the due diligence to check it against reality.
59:16
I've done customer development. I've talked to people.
59:17
I know this is a real problem, right?
59:18
So I'm willing to put my money where my mouth is.
59:21
Like there's so much skill and so much what I think is virtue, because it's skill combined with the kind of characterological like motivations and commitments that we build over time by doing disciplined, goal-directed work where you've built up courage, you've built up grit, you've built up this what I call self-honesty, which is one of the I think like one of the fundamental virtues that we need in order to build anything ambitious and great.
59:53
We've built up, you know, epistemic skills and toolkits for checking our biases, for having the kind of self-awareness to realize there things we know and things we don't know, and that that we know things at different levels of you know, certainty, and there's probabilistic knowledge, and then there's first principles knowledge, and that those are different, and you know, there's what we can see, and then there's what we infer.
1:00:16
And none of that comes built in.
1:00:19
None of that, you know, so so a lot of the work should be done through education, and I don't think today really is being done as well through kind of standard education, and that's where my husband kind of picks up the mantle.
1:00:33
He's the educator in our family, and is writing a book on I think I'm allowed to say this publicly on what he calls the new normal, kind of how to educate healthy, confident, virtuous adults, in effect.
1:00:48
And then what I my work, since I mainly work with adult builders and founders, is to to in some cases kind of build the foundations that didn't get built the first time around, because I don't think we have great educational you know, systems and kind of tools in place to help children develop those skill sets in the first place, and then also to strengthen and provide more scaffolding on like just how courageous are you able to be?
1:01:19
Just how big a risk can you take without kind of going off the rails and then becoming impulsive.
1:01:25
You know, just kind of how well are you able to keep a long-range, complex, uncertain vision clear enough in your mind that it can continue to motivate you instead of just kind of like defaulting into fear mode, at which point you're just going to burn out.
1:01:43
And not only can you make it clear to yourself, but you can communicate it to your team, to your investors, to other stakeholders, you know, to all the other people that you'd need to have on the journey with you.
1:01:53
And can you have the hard conversations and can you hold people to high standards?
1:01:58
So, there's so much knowledge and skill that's needed in order to achieve great things as a builder.
1:02:06
And that scales all the way up and down, you know, whether what you want to build is like you want to be a really good waitress or waiter, which requires a whole lot of discipline, skill, honesty, you know, respect for your customers, right?
1:02:19
Multitasking, just so much that kind of goes into doing that work well, and just like love of work, respect for work all the way up through you know, building a globally impactful company.
1:02:31
So, I'm still intrigued by the idea of being able to build a builder, right?
1:02:37
So, you're working with builders, obviously, you're working with entrepreneurs, you're working with people who are what I would call a self-selected sample. I. e.
1:02:49
, you're already working with people who took the plunge, so to speak. Yeah. That's right.
1:02:56
And there's actually a theory about America that is in an otherwise forgettable book called The Hypomanic Edge.
1:03:04
And the author makes the I the author makes the argument that the reason that America is has different DNA almost than other countries is because think about the people who came here.
1:03:22
Like these are people who left everything they knew, they left their family, their homeland, everything, all the support structures, etc.
1:03:31
that were in place and said, "You know what? it.
1:03:35
I'm going to America and I'm going to build things and I'm going to do my own thing."
1:03:39
And that in my opinion defined America right up until maybe post World War II. Right?
1:03:48
I mean, for example, the guy who did Mount Rushmore, he didn't ask for anybody's permission.
1:03:52
In fact, Coolidge probably when he Yeah, when Coolidge was president, they're like, "Hey, there's this guy doing this incredible You should check it out."
1:04:02
And Coolidge is like, "Cool."
1:04:04
So, he walks up, looks at it, he goes, "Wow, cool. What gave you the idea?"
1:04:09
Without any sense of, "You can't do that.
1:04:11
You know, you can't that you need to you need 10 years of approval and you need you need permits and all that.
1:04:19
And I bring that point up because that's, you know, we built the Empire State Building in what? 18 months?
1:04:27
And and then Same with the Brooklyn Bridge and physically impossible.
1:04:39
All of those things and this was kind of a playground, if you will, for misfits, as I call them.
1:04:46
In other words, people people who Me, too. Me, too. So, Absolutely.
1:04:57
I I just to be to be clear, I'm not an immigrant.
1:05:00
Our family has been in America since 1830 whatever.
1:05:06
But yes, I I used to joke that Yeah.
1:05:06
I used I used to joke that what we ought to do is just take all of the people in the former Soviet Republics and move them to America because oh my god. Yep.
1:05:21
I So I'm one of those imports and yeah. I know you are. I know you are.
1:05:26
And we could go on a whole tangent about but yeah.
1:05:29
I have I have never met a person who lived under authoritarian or totalitarian rule who was in any way favorably disposed towards tons of rules and regulations trying to inhibit people's ability to create and do things.
1:05:47
But but so Yeah, it Sorry, important caveat.
1:05:51
You're looking at the people who chose to leave and to come here.
1:05:57
Which is a very important caveat because in fact as I think about it with we just imported the whole population.
1:06:03
Which it like I think anyone who wants to come here should in fact just be allowed to come here and I think it should be a very like simple minimal like let's make sure you're not a like convicted criminal and that's it. Like come.
1:06:15
Please be one of us builds.
1:06:15
Join you know, this melting pot that it once was.
1:06:21
Peop If If we were to physic like if we were to make people come here who have like contented themselves with living under authoritarian rule, we would find a very different kind of mindset.
1:06:32
Fortunately and it's That That is an That is an excellent qualification.
1:06:35
Yes, let them come, not force them. I I'm not a fan.
1:06:41
I don't want power over any other individual in terms of compelling that.
1:06:47
You can compel anyone at the point of a gun to do something.
1:06:49
That is not true power in my opinion. anyway and indeed.
1:06:54
Definitely not in the American spirit.
1:06:57
Um but the challenge that I'm still kind of facing on this, you know, is it nature or nurture?
1:07:03
Probably a combination of both. So, let's Okay.
1:07:07
So, you're you're working with a you're working with a self-selected sample.
1:07:12
In other words, people who popped their heads up and are like, "You know what?
1:07:16
I've only got one life, and rather than worry about it and how broken I am and how bad I am and how horrible I am, I'm going to focus on making my life awesome."
1:07:26
Which I love that that part is what you're at about because so few people actually do that.
1:07:34
But, you also talk about kind of like the the perfect personality for for people attempting to build.
1:07:44
Obviously, the ingredients would seem obvious, but I run into so many people where they just don't get it at all. So, high agency, right?
1:07:53
Um it's like George Mack, who's a friend of mine I've had on the podcast a few times, basically says, "If you want to know who has high agency, do this thought experiment.
1:08:06
You are imprisoned in a third-world nation's jail system. You get one call.
1:08:13
Who are you going to call to get you out of there?" Ooh, that's awesome.
1:08:17
Yeah, and I like what I've seen of his uh work and I I follow him on Twitter, but that's a fantastic heuristic.
1:08:23
Yeah, who are you going to call?
1:08:27
Who do you know is going to figure out a way?
1:08:29
Like, they're just they're going to figure it out.
1:08:32
Yeah, and so high agency, courage, imagination, positive-sum attitude.
1:08:37
I mean, these are all like, for example, O'Shaughnessy Ventures.
1:08:42
We built it with one North Star, and that is positive-sum outcomes.
1:08:47
No matter what vertical we're looking at, be it our film division, our book division, our venture division, any of that, we want we only will play positive-sum games.
1:08:56
So, and people say, "Well, yeah, like like oh but have you ever turned down a a sure thing?
1:09:05
Well, first off, there are no sure things.
1:09:08
Yes, and also what sure thing, right? And also yeah.
1:09:11
Indeed, that is not but they but but but the but the answer is having that as a north star really does change your behavior in many ways.
1:09:19
So, for example, uh in our venture division, we we've seen decks where we know, oh man, they're going to make a lot of money.
1:09:27
Things like payday lenders.
1:09:30
We will not put a dime in a payday lender because they're predatory and they're negative sum games.
1:09:36
And and so, we resist the urge to say, oh wow, this is going to just rain the dollars.
1:09:43
Um and and keep the powder dry for for positive sum things.
1:09:46
But again, my question is for you, let's talk a little bit about your idea of um perfection the the misunderstanding you have of very nuanced understanding of the perfectionist verse I I you know, as most people take it, verse what your version is.
1:10:08
So, if you wouldn't mind.
1:10:12
Yeah, so this is where that drill sergeant zen master dichotomy comes in handy for me again in my thinking.
1:10:17
Where I think we have these default understandings of like what it means to be ambitious, what it means to strive for excellence, and a lot of it has gotten packaged together with those authoritarian drill sergeant standards that take the agency actually out of our hands.
1:10:38
Where we don't have agency over what outcomes we even choose to pursue, what matters to us, right?
1:10:44
On those kind of drill sergeant mindsets.
1:10:47
And so, perfectionism becomes inherently pathological because it's like trying to appease your inner drill sergeant by dotting every I and crossing every T when actually what's important is just to send out the damn email now before the ship sails, you know, and the investor goes with somebody else.
1:11:04
Remember that like actually do the thing or ship the product instead you know, get some feedback from customers on this first iteration.
1:11:10
They don't care if it's shiny and you know, they just want to like they want to see if it works.
1:11:15
You want to know if it works and so quit procrastinating by you know, like futzing over the design of the your title slide and actually ship the thing, right?
1:11:29
And the issue there is that we get detached like that the standards we're pursuing the quote of excellence that we're trying to like the bar to which we're holding ourselves is ultimately arbitrary.
1:11:44
Like it's it's whether it's based on the expectations of others, whether it's based on it's just like our fear-driven avoidance of risk, uncertainty, judgment, or even just action.
1:12:00
Like often it's that we're avoiding putting ourselves out there, right?
1:12:04
And because we have all these inertial kind of like templates available to us in the culture to substitute for the real pursuit of excellence on our own terms, it's really easy to like, well, I need to make my pitch deck look as pretty as this you know, template that literal template I've received from this really prestigious you know, serial factor whatever that like or like my VCs said they needed these three things.
1:12:32
So I'm going to try to check those exact three things off the list instead of explaining to them why the third thing actually isn't relevant to us or why there's a better way to frame the whole you know, the information they're seeking.
1:12:42
And so what I see so often what happens when we push back on that kind of perfectionism is we throw throw the baby with the bathwater in that we just generally lower the bar.
1:12:52
We say like, "Oh, you know, we can't really control who's going to invest in us, so we'll just like we'll just send this shotty, half-assed, you know, deck, and we won't work too hard to actually clarify our business model." You know, right?
1:13:05
Like where you're kind of missing the point.
1:13:08
Like no, focus on the important things, and actually really do the important things well.
1:13:14
And actually like really aim for the highest heights, and be ambitious, and strive for excellence.
1:13:20
Get the Get the stuff right that matters, and use your own judgment, your own standards for what matters, which is not just like a, you know, like arbitrary feeling-based judgments, based on reality and your really disciplined, rigorous mental model building as you engage with reality and learn about your customer, learn about the market, learn about the technology.
1:13:44
And so, one of the things that I think differentiates those self-selected founders builders who come to me for coaching, is that it's really like what they've chosen to do, it's such that it's sort of like easier to peel back the scaffolding of like whatever BS standards are in their heads, of like, "Well, this is the right way to pitch to VCs here.
1:14:06
This is the the right number of people to hire at this stage in my the, you know, kind of like to kind of peel away and say like, "Why? Why are you doing that?"
1:14:16
And ultimately, either they have their own reasons in terms of their mission and their, you know, like the the solution that they have proposed to their problem, their thesis about, you know, how is this actually like, "What What are you building that people want?
1:14:31
How do you know people want it?
1:14:31
And how do you plan to, you know, what's your go-to-market?"
1:14:35
Like either they have actually thought it through and have their own fresh, original answers, since they're trying to do something new, so the answers aren't going to come from a book, they're not going to come from any other, you know, source.
1:14:45
Either they have answers or it's very apparent when they don't.
1:14:51
Um it's very apparent when it's like is that's how other founders or like cuz it's really scary to fire people.
1:15:00
Like when it comes down to just Yeah, no, I'm just scared.
1:15:04
And I don't know the better way or I don't want to take the plunge or the risk at like why?
1:15:08
Have you thought through the upside relative to like what is the cost and what is the up?
1:15:14
Yeah, the upside is a little bit hazy to me.
1:15:16
Like I'm not actually, you know, like I kind of get in principle like that there's like infinite upside if this can actually scale, but like I don't know how to make that real to myself.
1:15:23
I don't really believe in Yeah, I've never done it before, so how can I know that I'll do it?
1:15:26
You know, okay, well, let's actually look at the qualities you bring.
1:15:30
Let's look at other examples of founders who have succeeded at bringing at similar product market and let's actually extract principles that you can understand for yourself.
1:15:40
Like you know, like here's the kind of course of action that leads to this kind of success and also it's stochastic. It's iterative.
1:15:49
I'm probably going to have to try a few times.
1:15:50
And yeah, I might fail, but like here's the nature of the upside if I succeed. Now I see it for myself.
1:15:57
Now I can sell it to VCs, to but you know, future team members, to a co-founder, to whatever the stakeholder.
1:16:05
So it's sort of like it brings us face-to-face with the reality that I think every human being actually faces.
1:16:13
But most human beings are more kind of insulated from it cuz like they're going to work for some institution where everything's already been codified and they're just told to do it this way and so it's really easy to just default to like I guess this is how it's done.
1:16:25
This is how it's always been done.
1:16:26
It's easy to be low agency in most contexts where people find themselves.
1:16:34
Whereas it just doesn't work if you've chosen to be a founder.
1:16:38
Does that mean it's like you have to have agency.
1:16:40
Just you just you're not going to get anywhere.
1:16:41
Like it's not going to build itself. It will just die, right?
1:16:45
That is the actual default.
1:16:45
The thing dies if you step away and stop building it. So.
1:16:52
The other trend that I am baffled by, which is uh confusing activity with effectiveness.
1:17:01
And and this on- this onslaught of busyness, busy work, um which which seems to me to be like you know, I don't know whether you've ever seen the movie Office Space.
1:17:15
I think it's really funny.
1:17:17
Uh and I think one of the lines there is uh I'm pretending to work just cuz because you're pretending to pay me.
1:17:24
And the cynicism and and default uh assumption of like, yeah, because uh that's the way it's always been done or my boss said that.
1:17:35
So, I'm I am fascinated by this smaller group that do exhibit high agency, that do focus on, you know, um creating things that make the world a better place, uh that are agile enough uh to recognize their mistakes and pivot and or um say, "Ooh, really that one up."
1:17:59
I I look at mistakes as portals of opportunity to learn.
1:18:07
And I I just think That's the That's the other thing.
1:18:10
How Tell me how So, I'm going to be your client now.
1:18:14
I'm an entrepreneur and um and I come to you and I've got great ideas.
1:18:22
I've got all of this, but you you interview the other members on my team.
1:18:27
This is not true for all of my teammates at O'Shaughnessy Ventures. This is not true.
1:18:34
I'm using this as a hypothetical, but you find that I have a bunch of actually B and C players working for me.
1:18:46
How did you know that this has been every founder conversation that I have and you know, so most of the founder conversations that that's it.
1:18:53
So don't assume any given client listening to this that I'm talking about you unless we've already discussed it, which probably we have in which case it's a known quantity, but I an overwhelming majority of founders I've been working with this is you know, the issue.
1:19:08
It's one of the issues if not the issue.
1:19:10
It's just like this the slip toward mediocrity.
1:19:13
Anyway, please go on back into the role play.
1:19:17
So my question for you is why? Why did I do this?
1:19:22
And I and they what I cuz I want to know why, but then I also want to know how do I correct it? Yes.
1:19:29
Yes, so so founder that I've gotten to know a little bit.
1:19:36
It sounds like you've caught you've gotten to this place because of whatever mental models you've brought to the hiring process in the first place that that I'd like to understand better with you cuz I imagine that when you made each of these individual hires you thought you were making a good call.
1:19:54
And I wonder if we can shed light on some of the maybe less than fully explicit background assumptions that made these hires seem like either the right call or the only call.
1:20:08
So you know, we would maybe zoom in like give me your worst performer right now you know, or based on my conversations like this person seems like you know, he's a C. Tell me the story.
1:20:17
A, how did how did you hire him? Why did you hire him? Why is he still here?
1:20:24
And if we fast forward a little bit the conversation.
1:20:27
Okay, so kind of sounds like in the first place you kind of rushed the hire maybe partly because you felt like you couldn't get anybody better.
1:20:35
better. You felt like the really like the 10x engineers wouldn't talk to you because you'd already hired a bunch of, you know, like more middle-aged years, which you had done cuz you felt like, "Well, you don't really have a network and who
1:20:46
would want And also like, well, people it's like you can't have such crazy high standards and be like, "Not everyone, you know, if they're not going to be a founder themselves, it's probably because they need a little more hand-holding." And so like, you probably
1:20:57
And so like, you probably made a bunch of excuses for the for these kind of more middling performers, right?
1:21:03
And if we really peel away the onion, you kind of have a mental model of people that's pretty cynical.
1:21:10
Like you have a pretty low expectation like you really aren't holding out much hope that like, "Hey, these people could level up if you actually held them to higher standards."
1:21:20
Like you're scared of them, you're scared that they'll leave, you're scared they'll they'll be some sort of a mass protest, you're scared that like now they'll poison the well and nobody will ever want to work for you.
1:21:30
And and then as a result, you go easy on them, you baby them, you you kind of just let slip each missed OKR and you kind of just keep it, you know, moving the goalposts lower and later.
1:21:45
And next thing you know, there's resentment on both sides.
1:21:48
Next thing you know, it is actually really hard to hire great people because great people don't want to work with mediocre people.
1:21:55
And then if you've got the middle management layer, like they're hiring us, you know, deep layers of that. Right?
1:22:01
And so you are really in a pickle here.
1:22:04
And the first thing we're going to have to check, the first thing we're going to challenge is this assumption that there's no one better out there for you.
1:22:12
We're going to figure out where did this come from, this scarcity mindset about people?
1:22:15
Cuz I just keep seeing this f- this idea.
1:22:19
And if we look back far enough, yeah, you probably in whatever random the neighborhood and school you got yeah, got thrown into as a kid, you probably were exceptional.
1:22:30
Most people probably did kind of suck.
1:22:32
You know, and and or the few that were also really bright, ambitious, agent, they were all probably sitting in their parents basements on their computers and not knowing how to socialize or talk to the couple of other peers who might turn out to actually be really interesting.
1:22:50
And so all of you were sitting there in the isolation of your yeah, you know, your rooms thinking you're alone in the world.
1:22:57
And you grew up still kind of believing that deep down.
1:22:59
And also you have this whole mental narrative about how oh, well, it's just cuz I'm so antisocial and I'm so obsessive and I'm this man you know, to come back to the hypomanic thing like it's something I'm the weirdo.
1:23:12
Something's wrong with me.
1:23:12
So I just have to accept like most people aren't like me.
1:23:17
I live in a world of normies who like yeah, they're just not going to work that hard and I just have to be okay with that cuz like normal people don't work that hard.
1:23:25
Normal people don't drive themselves like I do.
1:23:29
And you've thrown yourself under the bus to kind of feel like at least maybe you can take some ownership then of that but like the result is that you have cut yourself off from the community of people who actually would like see you.
1:23:48
And the community of people who would actually level you up.
1:23:53
How do you help that founder um to figure out oh, I'm selling myself short here.
1:24:02
And then and then what kind of course of action do you do you recommend he or she take to correct that?
1:24:09
Yeah, so to the first question we often start from a place of I'm not managing people well or we're not hitting our targets.
1:24:20
And like we're not going as fast as I would like us to go, as we could be going.
1:24:25
We're you know, like we're good.
1:24:28
Competitors are starting to to catch up or we're going to run out of money.
1:24:33
You know, whatever the case may be.
1:24:34
Like there are objective metrics that are not getting hit that could spell the you know, the doom of the company.
1:24:41
And we start to diagnose like what you know, like where are the bottlenecks? What's going wrong?
1:24:47
And it very quickly ends up we zero in on okay.
1:24:51
So like your engineers are not moving as fast as you like them to be moving. And why aren't they?
1:24:56
And well, they're not actually they're like heading home at 5:00 even though I've always modeled you know, working until the job was done for the day or you know, like really showing up and taking ownership.
1:25:10
They're not really taking that much ownership.
1:25:12
They're not really hitting their individual you know, and um team OKRs. And well, why is that? What's going on?
1:25:20
How do you manage those performance issues?
1:25:22
Well, either you know, well, I've got this the my CTO whom I hired, you know, who's not a co-founder.
1:25:30
He's got kind of a softer, gentler approach and you know, he tries to keep people motivated and keep up the morale.
1:25:41
And okay, so like what are the what's the conversation when they don't hit their performance targets and when the team is missing deadlines? Well, you know what?
1:25:52
Yeah, I don't really think she's that clear on the deadlines.
1:25:57
Or you know, oh yeah, they just moved the deadlines out a little bit.
1:26:01
Like well, what's up with that?
1:26:02
And why are like why is that allowed to happen?
1:26:04
Like what's your conversation with you know, what like what are your one-on-ones with you know, this manager or this team lead, whatever?
1:26:14
You know, and usually that's where I hear a lot of like pent-up frustration.
1:26:20
Yeah, there's a whole history there of we've had a few different like blowouts where I tried to kind of ratchet things up, you know, I tried to bounce like give tough feedback, have the tough conversations and then like he felt attacked or there was resentment or that Okay, so let's go back to like was he better at one time and then like somehow slipped into this more like you know, low agency mediocre performance.
1:26:49
mediocre performance. Well, no, actually I mean, there were probably red flags at the point where we made this higher or, you know, like there's some story and then the story repeats across a few different key personnel where I I thought this was the best I could get or I was scared or assumed that it would be
1:27:12
fruitless to approach the 10x engineer who might had been following on you know, online but like of course he's going to get snatched up by Google or of course they'll get snatched up by one of these sexier startups and I'm just a first-time founder and why would he even give me some like well but did you talk to him? Or well, I talked to him but I kind of
1:27:35
Or well, I talked to him but I kind of tried, you know, like I was a little bit hedging about it.
1:27:41
You know, Okay, well, what was your sale? What was your pitch?
1:27:44
Like is this going to be the best place in the world for this guy to work where you're going to hold a high bar you're all be doing the best work of your lives, you know, like at Apple and at the height of its glory?
1:27:55
Yeah, but I mean, I already have these other three engineers of whom two probably need to be fired but haven't been yet and Okay, we're seeing a pattern here.
1:28:04
So like that's so so that's how we, you know, usually that's how the diagnostic conversation goes and sometimes it's a like a short 30-minute assessment.
1:28:16
Sometimes it comes out over a couple sessions. Okay.
1:28:17
And if you're working on something else as a primary focus. Okay.
1:28:22
Now, what are we going to do about it?
1:28:23
And that's where it's a two-pronged approach.
1:28:26
Leveling up, raising the bar internally and raising the bar on how aggressively you network and source and recruit externally.
1:28:38
So, and both of these campaigns really have to stem from a common underlying shift from that scarcity mindset about people to an abundance mindset about people.
1:28:52
And sometimes before founders even willing to kind of start taking baby steps, first we really have to do some of reflecting together on what is the evidence?
1:29:02
Like, what informed this mental model for you of like everyone sucks but me or you know, I can't get anyone better and so I have to settle.
1:29:11
I just have to somehow make it work with mediocrities.
1:29:15
Like, where is it coming from? What's our data?
1:29:17
And what contrary evidence have you in fact encountered as an adult that could really shake up this model for you if you consciously assimilate it?
1:29:28
Like, okay, yeah, I've been through YC where like I had really interesting conversations with like Garry Tan and Paul Graham and you know, James Altucher and like I've had like people actually seem interested in what I have to say and I have these incredible interactions with but and sometimes they'll come to me for advice.
1:29:43
But no way that any of them would actually want to work for me.
1:29:47
Like, why are you assuming that?
1:29:48
And like there's so many other areas in which you're not willing to just make unchecked assumptions like that and you're really rigorous about hypothesis testing.
1:29:57
So, like can we bring that same mentality to this notion, to this implicit cynicism, an pessimism that you've formed about people.
1:30:06
Like, at least don't knock it till you try it.
1:30:10
Like, go, you know, be up get send a cold DM to Garry Tan, see what happens.
1:30:15
You know, half the time you'll be surprised, you know, or to to whatever 10X engineer that impresses you the most.
1:30:20
I'm like, make a hard sell.
1:30:23
Offer them a higher salary than what and more equity than whatever you've been assuming to be the standard package because you need to shake things up.
1:30:30
You need to you know, like this is the absolute number one priority right now if you don't want to die.
1:30:36
So, where else are you going to put that capital that could possibly matter more than like really turning the tide on the quality of your team.
1:30:46
And then be willing to start setting standards, to shake things up.
1:30:51
Sometimes I'll just I'll really work with a founder to like do a shake-up as soon as they're willing to to do it.
1:30:59
Like, we're going to have an all-hands where, "Okay, guys, I've been working with my executive coach and I've realized that I've let things slip a little bit.
1:31:06
We're going to be doing things differently from now on. So, here's the deal.
1:31:10
And some of you you're not going to like it, that's okay.
1:31:12
I know it's not you know, not everybody's going to want to be on this ship.
1:31:14
If it's not for you, if you've got you know, you need work-life balance, whatever it we're going to generously we're going to make you a generous severance package.
1:31:24
I'm going to help you find your next gig.
1:31:29
Just let you just let me know.
1:31:29
But, if you're on the ship here's going to be the deal.
1:31:33
Like, we're not missing deadlines anymore.
1:31:34
We're going to have daily stand-ups where you're going to tell me what you got done and how you're owning your outcomes, you know, for the end of the week, for the end of the quarter.
1:31:45
This is how we're going to be doing things.
1:31:46
This is now This is going to become the toughest place and the best place you've ever worked. Are you in or you out?
1:31:53
And just like really holding that bar but from a place of inspiration, from a place of like you know, is like do you want this to be the most memorable experience of those lives who got to work with you on this company?
1:32:07
Or does it just going to be another job?
1:32:10
So, those are some of the conversations.
1:32:12
love it because I've always operated under the assumption that you can't tell till you ask.
1:32:19
And it just I it baffles me that I've had conversations with people who I view as incredibly gifted, incredibly smart, incredibly all all of the above.
1:32:33
And then like I'm just waiting. Like, "So, ask me.
1:32:37
Ask me, Jim, will you invest in my company?
1:32:41
Jim, will you make this movie?
1:32:44
Jim, will you publish my book?" And they don't do it.
1:32:51
I hope that everyone I've coached is listening to right now to this version of the episode. Really, just ask. You might be surprised.
1:33:00
You know, you just can't you know, it's it's like you can't tell till you ask.
1:33:05
And if you think probabilistically, it's like Hey, I you I One of one of the things that I often say is we are deterministic thinkers living in a probabilistic world.
1:33:19
Hilarity or tragedy often ensue. That's right.
1:33:23
That's like Like isn't like who's who's going to be the home run king?
1:33:26
The guy who gets the most times at bat and is a good hitter.
1:33:30
And and you know, and just doesn't quit.
1:33:33
"Oh, I I got up three times and I struck out all three times. That's it.
1:33:38
I'm never playing that game again."
1:33:40
And it's just that's so wingy and whiny. know how Yeah.
1:33:43
It's like, "And do you know how probability works?"
1:33:45
Like, "A sample of three tells you nothing nothing at all about any predictive trends that you could say anything meaningful about." Yeah.
1:33:55
I mean, even it's And we see this in dating and we see it in certainly, you know, every aspect of the VC founder relationship.
1:34:05
Just like people making strong inferences based on really small sample sizes. Which is crazy. Crazy.
1:34:14
And and you know, the the idea that that like you just to not understand that persistence is kind of a requirement.
1:34:22
It's like when you look at podcasts, right?
1:34:24
Most people quit after recording three. Yes.
1:34:31
And that's the difference.
1:34:31
That That's a big lion's share of the difference.
1:34:34
I mean, I'm sure you're familiar with David Sacks and his founder's podcast.
1:34:41
I know David very, very well. No doubt.
1:34:43
Yeah, he seemed like you'd be friends, seemed like fellow travelers.
1:34:48
Yeah, just I would be simpatico.
1:34:49
And I just I love so much about, you know, his podcast, and and in this genre of podcasts like yours is like, you know, your son's.
1:34:57
And part of what I love in particular about his story is like he just kept at it.
1:35:04
Like it's just so clear in his case. How true.
1:35:08
Like he just outlasted everybody else who didn't love it like he did and who wasn't just going to keep on recording episodes come hell or high water.
1:35:19
Like I I and he talks about that in really inspiring ways.
1:35:23
Just like, "You're going to have to, you know, pry the microphone from my cold, dead hands to stop me from recording this podcast."
1:35:31
Yeah, you know, when when David first came to where I am in Connecticut, uh, I have a library over here.
1:35:37
And David is so funny because like he's oblivious. I love him dearly.
1:35:41
He but like he walks in, what does David do for the first 20 minutes?
1:35:47
Just go through all the books.
1:35:49
And he's pulling them out and going, "Oh, this one's really good. Oh my god."
1:35:54
And then you can see the actual excitement on his face. "I don't have this one.
1:35:59
Where did you find this one?
1:36:01
Why didn't you tell me about this one?"
1:36:06
I think this is seriously what I love like it his existence and popularity is one of these like beacons of hope in my mind for like for the civilization that we're trying to build and to rescue and to grow because like I love that so much about him.
1:36:27
And what I really what gives me hope is that it's what everybody loves about him.
1:36:31
Like it's what people respond to.
1:36:33
It's how he became such a phenomenon within Silicon Valley and just like within the tech world is just precisely by being that guy that you just described.
1:36:42
Like completely genuinely unapologetically unassuming like that's just who he is and he's just wearing it on his sleeve all the time.
1:36:51
He's not putting on a show, right?
1:36:53
And like like he's doing a show, but he's not putting on a show cuz the show just is him. And people love it. They respond to it.
1:37:03
And for me like to our earlier point about how do you combat this inner cynicism about other people?
1:37:08
It's like look at the phenomenon of David Senra.
1:37:14
Like the people the 10X engineers that you want to hire, they're listening to his show.
1:37:19
And the fact that they're listening to the they're not enamored with his fancy you know like production value.
1:37:24
He's like he hasn't he doesn't interview people.
1:37:26
There's no music like it's just him talking about a book for an hour.
1:37:30
That's all it's ever been.
1:37:34
And all the founders love it.
1:37:34
They absolutely love it and that's why they love it.
1:37:40
And you can tell it's like he ignites that within them and and connects to that part of them.
1:37:47
And so just like hire for that.
1:37:50
And know that it's out like look how popular he is.
1:37:52
All those people are people who love and resonate with excellence and passion.
1:37:59
Those are the people you want in your company.
1:38:02
Totally agree and um uh he he really is in many ways a great uh both example and beacon because Yeah.
1:38:14
one of the things that he really gets we've talked about it at length is he he is quite distinctive and David doesn't give a if he is not everyone's cup of tea.
1:38:25
In fact, David would be like would be horrified if somebody said to him Yep.
1:38:33
everyone every single person loves your podcast. Oh no.
1:38:38
He'd be like what am I doing something wrong?
1:38:42
That's so funny but that's so true.
1:38:44
That's actually actually actually better cuz it's a good differentiator.
1:38:46
It's like don't hire the people who hate it cuz they're yeah I'm sure people are like oh it's so like if he just talks for an hour what's the big deal? Great.
1:38:56
Now you know who to filter out. Exactly. Anyway, sorry go on. Exactly.
1:39:01
Well, I teased him in the past.
1:39:04
I'm a big fan of Rick and Morty and when they're trying to get Rick to go to therapy one of his lines is I refuse to submit myself to these agents of averageness. Oh, beautiful. I love it.
1:39:21
I love it even it despite the fact that it's an argument against going to therapy which I also can sympathize with because there's a lot of crappy therapies though and a lot of you know bad reasons to tell someone to go to therapy so I love it. Yeah. Yes.
1:39:40
And and and I think too that um uh we sometimes we get into trouble because many people are label thinkers, right?
1:39:50
And therapy has all sorts of re-evaluating um connotations that yeah, that that like maybe reframe and maybe say coach or um you know you know whatever. Yeah.
1:40:07
Because which is smart, which is super smart, I think.
1:40:09
Because you know Well, it's like I really admire people who understand that um it it if if if some idea or label has either really positively or really negatively uh colonized our cognitive uh functions you are would be very wise to avoid the one that has negatively colonized and move over to the one that has positively colonized because it's free real estate, right?
1:40:41
Like my son Patrick, one of the things that I thought that he did that was brilliant.
1:40:48
I I I have uh for much of my career been just I love technology.
1:40:53
Uh I started a company called Netfolio in 1999, which was the first online investment advisor, but the tech wasn't quite there, but we kept building towards it.
1:41:03
And then I kind of lost thought of about the oh yeah, the personal portfolio where everything is customized for you is great.
1:41:10
Um and then Patrick walked into my office one day and goes Dad, we we built the Death Star to kill a mouse here. Wow.
1:41:20
And he says, let's do let's do an AWS and take this incredible tech that we've built for ourselves and give it to our clients and let them use it.
1:41:29
But what really impressed me was his he understands this concept really well.
1:41:36
He cuz everyone was trying to think of a name for it, right?
1:41:39
The ultimate name of it ended up being Canvas.
1:41:43
But essentially he called it Like the Canvas?
1:41:50
Is this a different Canvas? Yeah, it's different.
1:41:52
Yeah, it's called uh it's a um it's a portfolio customization software that Ocean City Asset Management offers offers to clients. And it's called Canvas.
1:42:05
But what I love he created he created a new category that he dubbed custom indexing.
1:42:15
And at first when I heard it I'm like, "Indexing?
1:42:18
But we're not necessarily indexing."
1:42:20
He goes, "No, but indexing has such great mind share in investors because like over the last 15 years it went from being when Bogle came out with the first index fund, like everyone set their hair on fire and what was like, "It's un-American to try to be average and blah blah blah."
1:42:41
And then we had a Then we had a 15-year period where people who simply invested in index funds did really really well.
1:42:48
And so it had changed investors' ideas, but I love the way he hooked custom in front of a very well-known term that when you put them together it's like What's that? That's really cool.
1:43:07
Well, Jenna, I could talk to you Thank you.
1:43:09
I I I could talk to you all day.
1:43:12
If you've listened to the podcast, you know that at the end one of the things that we ask you is we're going to make you the empress of the world.
1:43:18
And you can't kill anybody and you can't put anyone in a re-education camp, but we're going to hand we're going to hand you a magic microphone and you get to say two things into it.
1:43:31
And the two things that you say are going to incept the entire population of the world.
1:43:38
And they're all going to wake up whenever their next morning is and think to themselves, you know what?
1:43:43
I just had two of the greatest ideas and unlike all those other times, I want to act on these two ideas. Right now.
1:43:55
What two things are you going to incept into the world population? Oh man. Oh man. I get two ideas.
1:44:03
It would be death is the default.
1:44:09
And you don't need permission.
1:44:13
Oh I love I love Memento Mori and you don't I especially like you don't need permission.
1:44:20
That's been one of my uh things that has done done very it's helped me in my career endlessly.
1:44:27
I always ask for forgiveness as opposed to permission. Yeah. Truly.
1:44:35
Where where can our listeners and viewers find all of your stuff?
1:44:39
Yeah, so the main place would be my Substack builders. ginagorlin. com.
1:44:44
And then I've done various uh podcast appearances like this one.
1:44:49
If you Google not Google, if you search for me on YouTube, um also the Founders Mindset podcast which I co-hosted with Alice Bentinck of Entrepreneur First.
1:44:57
There are three seasons worth of interviews with inspiring founders from across stages where the focus really is on extracting from them if they're the parts of their story that speak to the mindset, that speak to those nutrients that we talked about beginning.
1:45:16
You know, what do you need in order to what do you need how do you build your mind alongside your venture?
1:45:24
And uh how can what can you learn from the war stories of existing founders?
1:45:32
And yeah, stay tuned for my book which working title is the builder's mindset and new psychology of ambition in life and work.
1:45:42
And then anybody who wants to explore if you're a founder and you want to explore coaching, you can find me at ginagorlin. com /coaching. php. Or just ginagorlin. com.
1:45:55
It'll be easy to find from there. Perfect.
1:45:58
We we we will put all of those links in the show notes.
1:46:01
O'Shaughnessy Ventures is an investor and entrepreneur first, so we think very highly of them.
1:46:10
Gina, this has been terrific.
1:46:10
Thank you so much for giving me so much of your time and really loved chatting with you. All right. Bye. a joy.