Just give you a sense of this right. I'm 24 years old. I'm the youngest person in the company. I'm the newest hire in the company and six months later. I got named CEO Prodigy. That's pretty good. Pretty good. Right? I feel like I can rule the world. I know I could be what I want to welcome to a new segment that we're calling. It's like a Q&A but we're not calling it a Q&A. We're calling it questionable advice. Does that
that's someone shouldn't follow the advice or that we're just answering questions and giving advice it means whatever people needed to mean. It's people asking questions us giving advice advice. The advice is a little bit questionable as well. Right because we're not telling you what necessarily you should do. We're saying what we did. Well, we've done that works for us it may or may not work for you. It may be it may not be the best way. It's just the only way we know and so today the question we want to answer is actually different than usual. Normally.
We're always talking about starting companies starting businesses being
A CEO being an owner being an investor. But today it's about what happens if you're not there yet what happens if you're inside of a big company. So how do you stand out inside of a big do how do you become a superstar employee? How do you become an employee? That is just god tier and that opens up a whole bunch of doors for you inside of a company. All right everyone. We have a quick ad for HubSpot, but I want to let you know I actually use HubSpot and I use their sales tool which is what this ad is for house pot sales platform.
ERM it makes it just easier to sell stuff to do it faster to look at your pipeline to see what sales are going to happen. Just Prospect to cold Outreach and get more customers faster and easier plus it's easy to learn and freeze start. So you guys can check it out hub spot.com / sales how many employees have you had like that every company? There's always one or two. There's always one or two that are just like so clear and what I did was I basically plucked what are the things that they do? Like, what are the things? I remember that they did.
Stood out to me as well as the couple things. I did after we got Acquired and we went to Twitch. What are some things that I tried that actually I felt worked because you know, I had to spend two years inside of a bigger company for the first time in my life. And I experimented. I tried a whole bunch of things. I'm not going to talk about the ones that failed because those were embarrassing or not useful, but I will chair the ones that worked dude. What's crazy is let me add two things back stories to our our perspective on this one. You had someone who worked at
Monkey Inferno and all the other companies that are looking for a started. Well, you actually had a few interesting people the first interesting person with Steve Bartlett who's famous for his agency and his podcasts Diary of a CEO. I think the second person who's even more interesting is farc on a guy who started a company that's worth tens of billions of dollars. I was shocked at that guy would be would consider you a co-worker. That was a that was an amazing get the second point. I want to add to this president.
You actually add a few other people that were you know, Jason Hitchcock had a few other people that are wildly successful. The second thing to add this one of the best compliments I've received from you in the last probably 60 days is you texted me. And you said how on Earth did you get stepped wrong? And I forget who else you need? How on Earth did you brainwash them into working for you for as long as they did and that so we've had we've each had a handful of superstars who I don't ever use the word work for me because often time it doesn't I hate that it's not that it's
If we work together on something and I'm only going to be able to have them for a little a short amount of time that's principle. Number one you work with you don't work for and it's actually a pretty big mentality shift, which is working with somebody is a partnership. It's an agreement. It's a mutually beneficial Thing versus I work for you is a you know, you know, there's no dominant person and there's a person who just basically takes orders and does whatever is it, you know, whatever they have to do, you know based on the the task list and you
Want to be the work for the work for is, you know servant essentially whereas working with is a partnership, but it's okay to have to be that for a little while actually for someone who's interesting like if like Sean Perry, does it have a specific need to get done and some kid is like dude. I will I'm competent I would do exactly what you say for a little while. It's okay to do that for a little while, but I agree in general. You don't want to be that person but yeah working with is how I consider it to be done correctly. I hired a chief of staff to just now this kid basically had
A job at things like JP Morgan and he was like, hey, he just emailed me email me email me saying he wants to do stuff. He's like I can help you with this. I can help you. This. Is there a reason you're not doing this and then I'd be like, no not really I should do it. He's like, how about I come to it for you? I was like, yeah, I don't know about you. Yeah, whatever. He's like, here's an example here. I'm doing it bubble. But finally he did it and I was like cool. You're gonna quit your job. Is it I guess I can go quit right now. Like if you say I'm in I'll go quit and I said, okay Bet and then he went and talked to his boss and
His job Banking and now he's my chief of staff and even for him on day one. I told him I said you we work with each other and not you don't work for me because I actually want somebody who's going to treat themselves that way because they're going to get their actually get way more done. They're going to be more productive. There could be a higher caliber person if they think that way it's a mindset shift. Did you actually say bet
Do 22. I got to speak the language. Haha. Alright, this is the first subcategory or the first category. I think we should have we both have things that involve communication and writing you want to like name a few that you have under that category. Yeah. Okay, so I'll do I'll do it one simple one. So right and internal newsletter people know us as the newsletter guys because you created the hustle read by millions of people I created milk road which became the biggest crypto newsletter the
The news out of thing isn't just for external so you can have a hundred thousand subscribers or a newsletter. But I if you're inside of a company what you really want is 20 subscribers, but the 20 most interesting people in the company. And so what I did when I got to Twitch was there was a team like Bezos has something called the St. My don't feel the same as on it's like he's like 15 to 20 top lieutenants and twitch being owned by Amazon had its version of this called team.
And so I got put on t team and so the team is like whatever 15 of the top people in the company and I go to the first meeting and you know, it's a busy meeting they're not you know, they're like, oh, hey welcome Sean. We just acquired them by a child when I say hi. I'm like I say hi for two seconds, but really I don't know any of these people and so what I did was I created a newsletter and I created it for all of the tea team and then I would slowly anytime I meet somebody interesting anywhere in the company. I'd like oh, by the way, I write this thing every week and only goes out to you know,
Like number of people, it's fun. You'll like it. I'm going to add you I'm going to add you to the list and so they're like, okay cool. I'll be added whatever and what I would do is I copied James clears newsletter format James Clear does something called one two, three. Guess what? I wrote the 321 newsletter internally, which was basically like, you know, it was three artists A. He does three two one. I did one two three, so I did one photo from my camera roll. So here's a photo
I did two thoughts which are just like to like kind of tweet length things that I'm thinking about inside the company and Three Links, which is just random shit that I've seen what type of photos it would be usually something like, you know, not work related. So for example, if you're building thing, like I saw John Barton this funny mug not working at all. It would just be something about my life. That's in fact an interesting thing for my life and I'm not a big Instagram guy, but I kind of get the idea which is a photo can say a
What about you and what you're interested in and all it could kind of brag a little bit like okay, like in the kids learn how to ride a bike this weekend. Yeah, exactly. Absolutely such a good dad that you know, like here's what I'm doing. And so, you know, I like for example, I did one photo that was this list that my my niece had made she's seven and she she wrote her like routine. She like Ellie's day and then it was Eat Play Sleep eat play play sleep and I was like somehow the seven
World's got it figured out. What are the rest of us doing? All right, like that's the life you got to live and so people loved it there like oh, yeah, that's so true blah. And so I would just one photo to thoughts Three Links out send that on every Sunday and I wrote I said, hey the way I framed it I go, you know when I was a start-up founder, I used to send this to my investors and board of advisors every Sunday. I'd write like an update on kind of where my head's at. Well, you know old habits die hard even though I'm not a start-up founder anymore. I'm working at which I still have this hour every Sunday. I'd like
You guys are now my new my new board of advisors. You guys are my new mentors at this company. So I wanted to include you on this if you're on this list is because I think you're one of the more interesting people in the company that I hope to learn from and get to know over time. And so that was how I started it and I wrote that thing dude. I can't tell you how much juice I gotta this right because it took me about 45 minutes to write this every Sunday, but now I'm getting sort of like, you know, every single person's attention in a very and they know about me they learn about me. They have an opinion about me not everybody loved it. I'm sure.
Sure, some people are like whatever I don't care about this but it didn't matter it got like forwarded up. There was a guy who's like the VP at Amazon Prime would email me like dude. I love these Sunday things man. He's like, I wish we got to work together is he what he was even in the company you got forwarded and he was like, these are awesome. You want to like just meet this you sound great. You sound awesome. And that's the whole goal. You want to build a brand internally and one easy hack to do. This is the internal newsletter and there's actually a I think even more implications of this. So one of the greatest people I worked with was Steph Smith. She's been on the
Many times she's already doing great things and is going to do even bigger things. She there's a thing with history. I read a lot of history where oftentimes the person who writes the most popular history book or rights history books actually control the they control what we think of History, even if it's fake she did that, of course in a good way where it was a very tactical. She actually couldn't she was the best Google Sheets maker and a really good Google Slides maker and so she would dictate how the Google
Eat for the projects that she ran and then eventually other projects how they looked and that actually dictated what we tracked which dictated when we do that we do. Yeah, it's but she would make these. I don't know I'd ever sell you the sheet that we had for Trends never show you that no, I'll just show it to you sometime. But she made this beautiful sheet auto-filled and like I was like, oh thanks for doing this is amazing. You should do this for all these other things, but she basically controlled the information flow. And so if anyone had a question if anyone would want to do anything they had to go to her and she
Wasn't doing this for bad reasons, but be she was basically a very powerful person because of that reason when so you need to get really good at presenting your work and you need to be really really loud about it. But you have to be great at presenting your work making presentations writing stuff controlling the Google Sheets and making them look presentable and making them work. Well that is incredibly important to not enough people think about that 100% 100% the winners right history, right? And and and also the other thing is you want to be a maid.
Aker not a taker so most people in companies are just takers of plans so somebody else writes the plan somebody else makes the dock somebody else creates the dashboard if you just sit on the receiving end of it, what I would do is you know, when I was at these companies is I would always write my own versions of the plans and this is partly for practice because I wanted to I want to be the CEO. Well, then I should get reps doing the things that the CEOs doing is writing an annual plan. Cool. I'm going to write one too. What would I say and you write it and then you can
Read what they wrote and you see things that they did better and you see them some things that maybe they missed out on and so being a plan writer being a proposal writer being a update writer is going to be the thing that actually sharpens your skills. So that you if you want to be a leader what most people think is I'll wait till I'm promoted then I'll start doing leader things. That's not really how it works. Right you start doing leader things and then you get recognized and promoted. And so if you want to one day be the leader, you got it be the plan maker not the plan take her.
Her and you want to write your own version of all the things that all the key key stuff the annual plan the quarterly update the launch guide, whatever whatever it is for a given project. The next thing I would say is and this is actually challenging for a lot of people. I have a feeling it wasn't challenging for you because you're very confident person but it's important to be able to be loud and when I say loud, I don't mean that you have to talk a lot but I just mean you have to make sure everyone knows the cool shit that you're doing and there's a fine line between
Being selfish and stealing other people's stuff and taking too much credit and then also being loud but it's important to be allowed to let everyone know these are all the amazing things that are happening and you have to present that in a really wonderful way where it shows progress and it shows even if you screwed stuff up, here's the swings we took I think I always had this problem II noticed it particularly amongst the women who worked for me. I would always have to encourage him. I'd be like dude you got to speak up. You got to be louder about the shit. This is really awesome. You are not inserting yourself into the conversation.
He's nearly enough that you should this is really really talented amazing work. So I think being loud is incredibly important to sticking out within a company. Yeah, exactly. You want to work in public. So you want to you know present the things that you're doing and like you said, it's not all bragging. So for example, you know people would report in a format that sort of like, here's the here's what went. Well here's what didn't do. Well here's the screw-ups that we had this week and some of the things we learned from that are what we're going to do to fix it. So like it doesn't have to just be everything.
Was great and I'm the best and I did everything you know, it was all me me me. It's not that however, you're totally right that you're really only rewarded for what people know about if you're if what you're doing can't be measured or isn't seen it. Might as well have not existed inside of a big company and for a lot of people that's very uncomfortable to do they wish the world work differently where it was just purely purely merit-based and everything was equally visible. It's just not true. Like if a tree falls in the forest and there's no one there, right like, you know, you need to be able to highlight what you're up to and
You know carve-out 10% of your time to doing that. All right, everyone a quick break because I want to fill you in on a little experiment that I'm doing. I've got a new project. It's called money-wise. It's a personal finance podcast for high net worth people or young people who are on their way to becoming high-net-worth when I made a little bit of money. I didn't even know how much money I should be spending. Each month should be 10,000 30,000 50,000 and I didn't really have a lot of people to ask so I create a clock caste called money-wise because I wanted to figure out what are some of the things that people who have a lot of cash and who have a high net worth.
Earth what do they do with it? The first episode is with the friend of mine. He sold his company for 200 million dollars when he was 31 years old. He gets super transparent about his monthly expenses his portfolio how it impacts his happiness everything. So I want you guys to check it out. It's called money-wise. That's one word. You can find it on my Twitter bio. I'm the sampar or you can just type in money-wise on Apple Spotify and YouTube. All right back to the Pod. All right, everyone. This episode is brought to you by the product boss. It's podcast hosted by Jacqueline and Dina the friends of mine.
The part of the HubSpot podcast Network and it's a podcast about taking your physical product sales and strategy to the next level and they deliver the podcast in an hour-long Workshop style strategy. Some of the most popular episodes are debunking the myth of daily social media obligations, which Dives deep on how you can grow your social media presence from an audience perspective and get audiences eager to buy your products without feeling overwhelmed. They give a comprehensive play book that's filled with tips and strategy for building a big audience that align with your business objectives. So if this
Just you check it out the product boss, wherever you find your podcast. Let me tell you one more thing. That's a bit unrelated but a very controversial and it took me a hard it took me a long time and I had to go through a lot of tough challenges to learn this titles matter. Did you I imagine when you started your early companies and maybe you still do this. Now. You're like dude, I don't care about titles. You can call yourself anything you want. It means nothing to me. This is a flat organization but titles actually matter for an employee.
And they matter because of the job that you have there, but also the job that you can get elsewhere. So give me an example because I would disagree with this. I don't think they matter that much. What's it? What's the example you're thinking of where it mattered? Okay. So if you want to be called the head of something that's actually really important for the employee. It's actually scary for the employer because you want to set you if you give someone the head of marketing you can't hire someone above them or if you do they're going to cause tension however for the employee if they go and work at a new company, they're going to now say it
I was already had a marketing at this company. I need to be CMO or I need to have something of equal seniority additionally within the business if you if it's I'm the head of blank. I'm the head of marketing everything that go happens within that. I need to have my say or I need to have my finger on the pulse with that titles. I actually think are really important thing. They seem not important to an entrepreneur because you say these things like oh, it doesn't matter all working together, but I actually think that they matter for the employee.
So I would say in my opinion the logos matter. So there's a funny thing that happens where it's like you I bet you're guilty of this too. Let's say you're You're Building Hampton now, it's a community or membership based product. If you see oh this person ran Community or memberships at yeah, whatever Waipio Waipio Soho house, whatever. No known Thing versus unknown brand for some reason. We just sort of attribute all of the success.
Bad Company 2 like this person must be a winner because that company is a winner even if they had very little to do with the winning of that company that the secondary Step At The Hustle. I had a guy who worked at Facebook and he wanted to join us and I was like, oh you're in and we hired him and he was so it was horrible, but I totally fell victim to that. I've done that all I do that all the time. This happens to be with live streaming people are like, oh you worked at twitch all we need somebody who we're doing live streaming. So it'd be amazing to have you on board because of your experience at which they don't know my experience at twist. I don't know what the hell I was doing there. I learned way more
About live streaming at my startup that they don't know about that was actually building live streaming that was working in that space. But if all I had was that unknown startup name, I would have gotten zero credit for being late. He'll live streaming expert guides. I think loners matter a lot and getting better a winner logo. Unfortunately that stamp that's Stampy's is cool the thing code everything been having Harvard or an ivy league and I below if you're good enough to pass that bar. You're good enough and and one is enough one is enough. That's the key I think one.
Probably going to do is they go low go collecting one is enough if you get if you got Harvard awesome, you don't need to also go get me another MBA from some other place or if you have Facebook, you don't have to make the next one Google you can make the next one a little higher variance variance because the Facebook will carry the other thing I'd say is managers matter. So when we got acquired by twitch, we were getting interviewed by people and we got interviewed by several people one. We were joining and they were like, they're supposed to be diligent seeing the acquisition but I was also diligence seeing them that I was like dude. I know that manager.
S'matter people don't quit jobs quit managers. And also if you're stuck under a manager who doesn't have a lot of respect in the org, you're not even going to get to see a lot of the interesting shit that goes on or even if you do stuff it's going to be buried under however much clout that manager has and so they first tried to put me under somebody and I was like, no. No, I'm not working for that guy and they're like, what? What's what's the problem was? I was like nice guy. I'm not working for him and they're like I was like, is there anybody else because you know, maybe these two people
Like them they see because they clearly like, you know, we're buds with the CEO and had more like they were doing all the interesting projects and this guy's over here working on trust and safety or maintenance of something or like Plumbing under the under the bridge. Like I'm not trying to work on all those boring shit those boring projects or with that guy that guy has no respect in the org and I think managers matter pick somebody you're going to learn a lot from but also somebody who got who has some surface area that you can get shit done and switch if you don't like where you're at Trent is actively switch. All right. I have a different.
One wait, hold on dude. What I was sold to the when I sold the hustle to HubSpot. It was the the plan early on was I'm out of the picture and I'm just into the Pod but they were like, all right, how about like VP of marketing and reported this guy and I was like, yeah, can we give me like a lower title? And you can make Brad who's my VP make him the VP and I'll report to him. It was just like way better but I was like, yeah, let's let's break it down a notch. I'm not going to be a VP.
All right. Now there's something I call the 5% rule. I learned this from for console and we got acquired by twitch. We're sitting there and we're supposed to work on X right. We were at that time a taker we got acquired to do this. Let's do this and forgot wasn't very motivated. And I was like dude. Come on. Let's try to do a good job here. Right? Like we don't have to totally sandbag this I get it. It's not like the same as what it was our company and this might become the next big thing. But like you seem totally checked out and he was like no no. No, I'm not.
Down with the company. He's like but look at this. They pulled up the overall company dashboard. He goes best case scenario this thing that we're building best case scenario which of these metrics changes
And I'm looking at the key the number one dashboard for the company the kit the key kpis overall ones. I was like do none of these go to page three, there's subdivision subdivision and then this one and he's like cool. So let's say all right. Let's say we change that one. How much do you think that changes the overall picture? Like he's like don't you think that we should at least like if we do a great job what we should do to make at least 25 percent impact in the company.
And I was like my ego gets a volume like yeah, of course five percent, uh sounds low. Actually. He's like, yeah, he's think I just think we're capable of doing something that's going to at least move the needle 5% He's like a he's like, I feel like if I did something and it didn't even whatever we did if we did a good job if we succeeded but it couldn't even move the needle 5% He's like I kind of feel like that was like a waste of time and that's what I learned the 5% Rule and when we immediately switch to something that would do that and it was such a good decision. I wouldn't have done this.
But in the same way that navall says you want to place a absurd hourly rate on your time so that you value your time and you put a price tag on your time. This actually is also inside of a company you need to put a price tag on your projects that you simply will not work on projects that can't move the needle for thanks for the company because if not, why am I here? What is the point and if you carry yourself with somebody who can actually move the needle for the company, it's sort of self-fulfilling you will become that person who actually can do that simply like
You just raised your standard. And now that's what you do to do your you you're lucky to have Fork on course for a con. I don't know if it was he the co-founder or was he one of the first hires a tap 11. So Apple Evans a at tech company 15 billion dollar market cap at 1.30 billion market cap amazing guy. So he joined the company before it was even Apple oven. He was not one of the co-founders. He was just like a random engineer that they hired they had like eight people. He was like person nine within a couple months. They were like, all right. This guy's a big guy, right?
Stood out like a superstar. Does this guy's the guy let and they went up there? Like hey, I think we kind of built this team wrong. Now that we see you. We look at the other eight people we hired before you that are above you like we realize we did this backwards. Can you like fire all these people and rehire a new team of people like you he's like, okay. So you did that he ends up getting like a co-founder Equity stake in the thing and you know becomes It Go ends up going public and it's like a twenty billion dollar company years later same thing happens. I hire them at a monkey Inferno as Android engineer.
Only right. So there's like, you know above him there's a director of engineering above him is the CTO above him is me within a couple months. I was like this guy is a superstar like I you know Android engineer is simply the wrong title and I told him I said look,
I you're going to end up in a different role. Just give me a month to figure this out and within a month. We had switched it up where he end up becoming CTO and we basically rebuilt the whole team around him and some he's a perfect example.
He sort of has like a master sensei like a like a that type of wisdom to him where for some reason whenever he says something I believe them and I and I think he is actually write a lot
more importantly all the engineers. You'll ever higher will believe him, right? This guy's a leader of Engineers, which is like extremely valuable.
Let me give you another another principle. All right, here's a simple one fix your Zoom setup.
Just don't look like dog shit on every call. In fact, you should look incredible on every call. It doesn't cost that much to do it. Like you can do it with an iPhone app. There's an iPhone app called camo. You can download
that's what I'm recording on right now, by the way,
and you can be DSLR quality from your from your iPhone if that's all you have if you want to get one better just get a light right like a light off Amazon that's 50 bucks and that app will set you in the top 1% of people at work of in terms of how you look when you show up.
Do that and have I will also buy a podcasting Mike. You're my can be, you know, a Yeti a Blue Yeti microphone. If you need even better would be these like Shure microphones. You just just look good and sound good because like no matter how good your ideas are if it's wrapped up in a crap sandwich. It's gonna just come across poorly and it's the you know is the digital equivalent of dressing good and I think people really underestimate this. I think you may not
let your company right I meant
Try to make it a rule and I'll give a get really tactical. I'm using a shirt and I'm traveling right now. And this is my travel kit Asher mv7 USB mic that's $200 and iPhone with a fifty dollar camo subscription and 150 dollar Elgato key light. That's that's my setup when I travel so if you think this looks good enough, that's what it is.
Yeah, it's going to be better than most people's like up the nose shot with the crappy audio and like, you know sitting in a closet somewhere so try on that. All right I have
Another one for you, unless you how easily she got what you want to do.
Well for con actually is a great example of this and a few other people really did a good job at this. I think that when you get into a group whether it's work or any other type of group oftentimes, the most confident person is not usually the smartest person but the most confident person wins and I think confidence is displayed in a way of saying things like this is this is the path we're going to go down. This is what we're going to do. I have a
Percent chance certainty that this is actually going to work my logic is this this and this but this is this is the answer at least this is the answer for us to try and I think that a company when you work with a small company like any company I've run you work with the CEO or the owner at a larger company, you know, lll lll go up to the owner somehow or the CEO but it still matters with managers and be seasons and shit like that. But the confident person that says this is the way and they dictate the way and they explain their reasoning and they're confident about
It and you start believing in them. You still have to be right more than you're wrong. But the most confident people I think typically succeed the most
I agree. I'll give you two things one. The think you just described is like think it's called the McKinsey pyramid principle you aware of this. No, so basically
Most people get communication wrong inside of a company because they bury the lead. So what they'll normally do is they'll say beginning middle ends like a story and in the end is the conclusion the and is the take away. What we should do is what's well what we decided whatever but busy people inside companies which are most of the leaders inside companies. They don't like that format. They want the opposite they what they want is to say my recommendation is we should do this.
For these three reasons number one. Number two number three and I believe those three reasons because we have evidence underneath this this we do not have evidence for but we will but it's a reversible decision in this third thing by the block, right and you stack the the main conclusion first and then you like a pyramid underneath to support it with your supporting arguments. And that's just a simple communication thing to flip another communication thing to flip that I learned was
There's if you want to become a more clear Communicator use the what why so what framework Emmett from twitch taught me this so basically it's what happened or what's going to happen. So, you know if it's passed looking what happened if it's if it's forward-looking what we're going to do why it happened why we're going to do it and the last one is so what so let's just give an example. What happened is the metrics. Let's say, you know revenue is down 10%
this month why because last month we did this extra promotion. So we kind of knew it would artificially inflate last month's Revenue this month is actually normal. If you look at the overall trend line nothing to worry about here. So what so we're going to continue doing this and actually we're going to consider doing those extra promotions every other month because they seem to provide a provide a boost or whatever right? Like you just you get things idea what y. So what just is it generically useful template or outline like you can write that on your paper before you figure out what do you say?
See email or how are you going to write this document? Just write what y. So what and you should be able to bullet point of that and then that's 80 to 90 percent of the material is already done at that point.
And I find what helps is if you put a confidence level in there because a lot of times people think well, if you're confident you're saying that there's a 99 or 100 percent chance that whatever is going to have your say is going to happen is going to happen. You shouldn't do that. You should say I'm actually should be really conservative and say that like, you know, 65% 70% like I'm fairly certain or sometimes you're like
I'm actually I actually think there's a 30% chance that this works. But if it does work, the outside returns are quite huge and if it doesn't work, it's reversible and these ways and so I think you need like a little bit of a I don't know how you would say it like a in Easy Landing if you
fail Superstars do three things number one, they think and probabilities not certainties. That's what you just described. The second thing is that they manage expectations, which is the second thing you just said, which is you don't need to over promise and under deliver. In fact, you know,
Under-promise and over-deliver is a better mindset and I remember one time going into a meeting and this is something I learned from my dad. We were going to a big partnership pitch meeting and we thought we thought they have this thing and with our technology they're going to get this huge yield this huge result and the result is like 100 times better than their current thing. So I was like, oh slam dunk put that on the slide baby hundred times better and we go into the meeting and I my dad puts up a slide and I noticed that he's changed it.
It only says three times better and I'm like dude you messed up. Like what happened? Why did you do that? And he's like, he's like did you see their faces about three times better? They were over the moon that other stuff is now my dry powder like I can beat if I could beat the three times even better if I said a hundred times and we came in at 80 times better. It would be seen as we did not deliver on what we promise. He's like and so, you know, whatever, you know, forget the exact, you know numbers here the principle holds true which
Only sell to the amount you need to sell that gets them to agree to green-light the thing or take action, but don't over promise beyond that even if you think it's capable because you'd always rather beat your numbers being your numbers is like, you know, how you exceed
expectations and it makes you trust them more and so here's an example so in I'm looking at the deck now so Google whoever's listening you guys can Google Uber C deck. So in 2008 Uber was just getting started there raising only 200,000 dollars and on slide 20 they have
Deck or a slide that says potential outcomes and they say best case scenario becomes a market leader with over a billion dollars in annual revenue realistic scenario gets 5% of the top cities and we make around 20 or 30 million dollars a year in profit. Worst case. We stay at ncar hundred Client Services business and just save some time for San francisco-based Executives versus when you see a slide deck from a pitch and it like everything is like up to the right. You're like, all right, dude. I don't trust you now because you are saying something outlandish like this and you're saying it
With a huge High degree of certainty. So yeah. Anyway, I don't think I'm the
confidence thing on the confidence thing is people think confidence comes from answers. No confidence comes through asking intelligent questions. Any leader knows that you can tell a person's quality of thinking by the quality of their questions and it always stands out if somebody asks you a question that's on point or breaks the frame of how you're thinking about things that person always stands out in a meeting even though they didn't deliver.
I'm like, you know, very boastful confident conclusion. And so, you know an example of this would be you're in a meeting and it's kind of a messy. It looks like you know options A and B both suck instead of just saying no, we need to a or know we needed to be somebody who asks a different question. That's like, you know, what would an easy solution look like here, right? Hey, what's the simple thing? We're missing right? I'm just going to ask this out loud. Let's see if there's a see if there's an answer because if there is that might be quite valuable to us right now.
Or you know, we've been saying this thing just want to say this out loud. Is that true? Do we have the data to support that like somebody who's questioning assumptions or breaking frames with their questions or that says, you know, we're trying to solve this problem feels like we're solving a from scratch. We're not the only ones who have this problem. How do other people solve this or how have we solved this in the past? What's worked for us? And it's anybody who's asking questions like that that are going to cut to the answer faster. You stand out that's a that's a different way of showing confidence versus just saying Mimi. I have the
answer.
the one question that I love that all my employees hate is I'll give this like
12 month plan or something. I'm like, yeah, how do we do this at like four weeks right that question. I know some people question
some of the best people they they frame that question nicely. They say this is the sky Florian. I used to work with he would always say this he'd be like
I'm going to say something you could beat me up. If you think this is a terrible idea, you know, if you feel free to be me up, but I just want to say it and then he'll say the thing and it's such a disarming way of bringing up an idea that might be counter to way. The flow is going or whatever because you're always like I'll phlearn welcome, you know, don't worry when I can beat you up about this idea, but he would say that right or you know, this other guy Dan he would he would do this thing. He's now the CEO of torture he would do this thing in meetings where he'd say,
You know, he'd slow everybody down. He'd be like, you know, it's one thing we could say is a b and c he'd like layout an argument real quick is like this one thing to say this. It's another thing if we were going to say, you know d e f
And he would just like frame it so slowly for everybody because usually it's the person who can kind of like synthesize the arguments like what I'm hearing you're saying is a b and c. I just want to make sure that it's is it a b and c and not actually d e and f and the person who would bring that Clarity to the meeting was always like the essential person right there the person who everybody thinks that they on the way out because they actually help you figure out the solution where it felt like every was just talking in circles
what you want to do one or two or three more.
Yeah.
Okay, here's an easy one. Let's say you're inside of a company today. But you want to go start a company someday, you need to start creating your own version of the Midas list, which is who are the five most interesting people inside this company. The people that you would want to recruit later on what I did was I just I said at the beginning I said while I'm here at this job. Here's what I want out of this by the time I leave these doors. I want to have the following I said and I wrote down a list one of them was like I want to learn one or two things about leading a
company that I don't know today because these people have managed bigger teams and do it better than I'm sure that I do it. So I want to at least have one or two key things that I could take away as a manager number two. I want to have the respect of the CEO. I want him to be able to say dude if you leave here and you tell me you're gonna go start a company. I want him to want to write the first check. I think that would just be a signal that I did. Well when I was here
would Emma do that for you.
Yeah. He actually slacked me one time. He was like Hey, I was out of the blue. He's basically slap me that exact same thing. He was like, I wish we going
Wish we'd be able to keep you forever. I don't think that's gonna happen. You know, if you ever do decide to do something, I'd love to you know, yeah, I'd love to back you in that and I was like, oh man, what a compliment. Thank you. That's actually showed a Max. I was like that was on my list of things. I said I wanted out of this experience. So that's a cool full-circle moment. The third one is you want I said, I want to walk out of here with five people five more people in my talent Rolodex that I could reach out to if I ever needed to hire and and that's what I did. I was like, oh this girl in data science massively underrated like
She's the real one who delivers the work. She's kind of Junior here, but man, she would be somebody output right away or this guy over here on the sales team God that guy was smooth if I ever have a thing for sales. I know who to who to contact and actually right now with one of our new companies. I'm trying to fill a role and those are the people I went to first to be like, hey, I have no idea if you're available, but I made this list before of who are the five people. I would love to work with some day and you were on it. And hey that day is here. You know, what are you up to now and let's chat. And so that's I think another good thing if you ever want to start a company like
Just pay attention to who the hitters here because your talent Rolodex is what kind of becomes a limiting factor as you try to build new companies. Right? Like I'm sure you have people that you know, you'd love to speed dial and bring on board to a new thing and I think you did this with Hampton right like Dennis. There's some people there that were at the hustle because that's the experience you had.
Yeah. I think that you actually asked what was it you who said something like a really good question to ask yourself is if you were starting your like, what's a your things only going okay if you were
If you were starting it again, which you would you'd have to ask yourself what I hired the same people and do it the same way and for many cases you say no, I would change this system this and then your advice to them was like well just fucking do that right now. Yeah. Yeah, but the but the other answer is okay. Well when you do it again now you have your list I think you know in the mafia they use the phrase and then succession kind of stole the phrase where they say like, oh, he's a serious person and a serious person. That means you call them hitters, but in the
Theodore my back. I realize books on the they say he's serious. He's serious. Yeah that guy serious. And so although say he's not a serious person. You don't want to mess with that person. So you want to find serious people
I have two other little ones fast ones one is find a paper cut problem. So I've noticed a lot of people who do well and companies they do this in the first two weeks when they join they find something that's just been an annoyance that nobody's ever fixed or nobody's got to because it's not that important. It's never the most important thing.
And they just go clean that up voluntarily. I call this the paper cut problem. Like what's the thing that has been given us paper cuts? It's kind of annoying but you're not bleeding out. You're not dying. You don't feel awful. And if somebody fixed it, you'd be like dude. Thank you for doing that. Like, you know, it would actually stand out a lot. I know several people that did this they go to a company and they immediately identify like, oh here's some annoyance that two people have referenced. I bet this annoys everybody. And actually I think if I just spent one Saturday working on this I could fix it and they did that in a
Just like boost their stock so
much when I was in seventh grade, I had a job at a bakery and I would like clean the floors and wash dishes and there was a corner or there's a shelf where we have to like put these dry dishes and the Shelf was broken and we hired another janitor to work with me. And I remember like I had worked there for like eight months and it's fucking shelf was always broken as a pain in the ass and like within the first week this guy fix that shelf and I merely thought that's the way to do things that you
didn't replace exact get it right. And by the way you get
rewarded for doing the things you didn't have to do right? Like if you just do your job that's called your job. You do not get like extra recognition or reward or or any kind of bonus points for doing your job. So you by definition you have to find something that is beyond your job or doing your job beyond what was asked if you really want to get this test and out server simple obvious principle, but take that and make it actionable by like go look for it right as soon as you start looking for it. You'll see it right? It's a thing that the
Who's been there for eight months has been ignoring his become a he's just accepted. It's become a blind spot for them. But for a new person if you're noticing you'll see it right away and you just go fix that thing you get so much. Yeah. This guy's head janitor now, I mean
it worked out,
but honestly, if you're going to be a janitor be the head janitor like be the best you gonna be the best goddamn. Janitor anybody's ever seen. I got one practical one and then one fun one practical one is the other problem you want to find
Is the A+ problem at any given time in any company? There is the A+ problem. It is the thing that the people that's keeping, you know the exact team up at night. They're worried about it. What I did was I just found the a problem and I would only work on that. I would just work on that. You know, I would do my main job kind of like, you know, 70% is good or 50% is good or sometimes 0% is good. I would just put it on pause honestly didn't even matter relative to the A+ problem. And you know, I took a little more risk than most people could I didn't care if I ever got fire like it was
Q please fire me invest my shares and that would be a dream but
then immediately by the way, we had a friend who is that a company and he goes there was layoffs this week at our company and sadly I was not impacted
exactly probably work on it. I remember putting up told the story before I was that a company and basically a competitor was like attacking them in like was stealing their top customer, basically.
And I figured well, that's probably the tables really think everybody's thinking about and so I just did some analysis did wrote up a two-page doc and I sent it to the CEOs like hey, you know, I have no idea who's working on this but you know, I was curious so I would Doug and here's what I found it immediately got like text intro'd into a group chat as I hate Shawn's in on this now and I think that that's that's really what you want. Right Liz you want to be working on the interesting thing because that's what the highest caliber people are doing is where the highest impact is you might as well you have us only have so many hours in the day might as well work on the higher impact.
With the most interesting High Caliber people. That's how you get better. What's your last fun? One? The last one one is yet to create a brand for yourself. So like you have a little story right? There's all these moments inside companies where it's like you do introductions or you're at some team off-site and you know, you have two choices, you're either going to blend in or you're going to stand out the best way to say that is to be yourself. But the the way to be yourself is to just remove the filter and so is your brand so I think there's been a couple
Like when I was at Monkey Inferno and it just give you a sense of this right? I'm 24 years old. I'm the youngest person in the company. I'm the newest hire in the company and six months later. I got named CEO prodigies pretty good. Pretty good. Right and the way to do that is you actually you know, you making it back but you also got to build some sort of brand for yourself. And so mine was I was going to be sort of like the action like basically just like take Massive Action on everything. So whatever the thing was I would be like. All right, cool. I'm going to take action on a
Immediately be I want to do this shit that nobody else wants to do like I'm gonna go further you. Oh we got to do this or we don't know if people will like this who will give it a prototype. I'm gonna go talk to some people would go to the mall and I would talk to people I get feedback and I come back with like written feedback. It's just a shit that nobody else really wanted to do and it just built this thing. Like I'm going to consistently take action. I might have a higher bias for Action anybody else and I would talk about that. I'd be like, yeah, like I don't really know. You know, I remember this one guy did this intro and he said this thing this guy stood up and he goes
Rose
I don't know anything about art politics. I don't know what he was. I don't know anything about art. I do anything about politics hell, I don't even know where the remote is in my house. The remote for the TV is in my house. But the one thing I know is how to structure deals. And today. I'm going to tell you about how to structure deals and I was like, wow what an intro one of the Fantastic intro it like always stood out to me and I thought you know, what as much as your brand is going to be that you're good at X y&z. You could say how bad you are or how little you know about you know these
The three things and just be honest about it and almost poked fun at yourself. So I would tell people like look I have the least experience of anybody in this room. That's obvious. I have never worked on any of this stuff before I don't know how to code. I don't know how to design but I'm gonna make myself useful the way I'm going to do that is it seems like what you guys need is help actually getting your product into people's hands and getting feedback quickly and actually iterating from there. So I'm gonna go crazy on that. All right what you guys are gonna get the next six weeks as me going crazy on that sound good and they're like, they're like great.
Like Warren Buffett says look for partners who have a high IQ who are ethical and have a lot of energy and I did same thing where I was like, well, I actually don't know if I'm high IQ out of three ain't bad. Yeah. I don't know. I definitely am ethical and I have a shit ton of energy. So my wheels are spinning fast if you guys just want to put me in the right direction, I'll go ahead and the car will run and I'll run quickly and I'll get you what you need. I had the exact same brand as you know,
when we got acquired I just was like Hey, I'm a start-up guy inside this big company. I'm a I'm a I'm a start-up guy. I've only ever
And so I don't know anything about it be company. Honestly, I'm going to probably make some mistakes that are things are obvious that you should do in a big company, but think I hope to bring to the table is I'm just going to keep working the way I know how as an entrepreneur. I'm just going to just do that here and you guys tell me what parts of that are working for you guys or one or not, right? That's part of the brand but the other part is like stand out a little bit. I remember sitting in an off-site is like, oh, how about everybody just share, you know how things are going. It was like person one said this like boring thing about like, you know,
There's immediately wanted to like work mode right? Like, you know, they were like, you know, here's what I'm doing. Here's the problem. I'm having here's what I'm doing.
Here's a problem. I'm having you have
this employees doing this and ever is just kind of bitching and moaning and telling a very Bland story and I just decided what it's going to come my time. I don't know what's going to come out of my mouth, but it's not going to be that and so I just told a story that was more funny. It was poking fun of myself about something that I had done recently and a mistake that I had made. So instead of blaming my team or my whatever. I just told her I was like, you know, here's where my head's at because all your they weren't saying like
Like give us a team update their just saying like, you know, let's all be present to share what's on her mind how you're feeling right now. And so I did that and that stood out at the break. Everybody was like dude. I love that story and you know the real lesson there is really like take a bit of a risk and don't take yourself too seriously inside companies because I think there's a tendency to try to button up and blend in and I would say
That's not what the best people do. I don't think that's what I don't think that's how the best people
act we have. This guy a hand to Dame Doug and Doug is a very stereotypical engineer. So he's very black and white and because of that he's done a very good job of just being honest constantly. And so if someone trying to bullshit me, I'll just be like, what's Doug think Doug? What do you think and he'll just be like that's stupid. He won't stay that way. He'll be like, I don't think that's the right way. I think this is the right way it for these reasons or he'll be like, I don't
Like I don't exactly understand like branding but I think that a lot of people like this this this and this and they like it for these reasons therefore that way is or is not the right way and it's just want to Snug I just always want to know what's Doug. Think about this. He's very analytical and he's very honest and he doesn't because he's, you know, like a normal engineer. He doesn't exactly understand it what's hurting my feelings or what isn't hurting my feelings and I love that about him. I love that. I'd always want dogs in my life people who just don't bullshit me and they'll say something like that's stupid that's not stupid. And I appreciate that.
That's his brand. Is that the pod
that's the pot? So those are our tips how to become I don't know a superstar inside of a company how to stand out to make a name for yourself inside of a company.
And if you're if you're if you're listening on on iTunes or Spotify go to the YouTube and a subscribe because we're about to cross 400,000 and be comment other questions that you have for the new segment questionable advice. If we get a good questions, we'll do it.
I like I said the YouTube that's how my dad
says it to that's cool. Go to the YouTube what I look at
what I hold my phone to take a picture. I use two hands as well
as releasing a day and I love doing it.
What you said was
great. Every time I post a tick tock I feel like I ate I like reverse my age by one month. I'm just getting younger just by per Tick Tock by Tick-Tock it if you want to be young you do as the young people do
you got to like you're going to you're squinting your eyes you're going to hold your phone with to
Hands, and you're going to like look down on it. That's how it feels right now the damn thing
off ha ha ha.
Alright, that's the pot.
I feel like I can rule the world. I know I could be what I want to travel never looking back.
