Young and Profiting with Hala Taha - Matt Higgins: Burn the Boats, Refuse to Die. Legendary Shark Makes the Case for No Plan B | E212

Episode Date: March 6, 2023

Matt Higgins spent most of his teenage years taking care of his single mother and scraping gum off of tables at Mcdonald's. After he dropped out of high school at age 16, he graduated from Fordham Law School and became the youngest press secretary in New York City history during the September 11th attacks. Matt created an entrepreneurial career that has now spanned multiple industries. In today’s episode, Matt comes back on YAP to discuss his brand new book Burn the Boats and his winning formula to stop hedging and embark on a lifelong journey of breakout success! Matt Higgins is an Executive Fellow and teacher at Harvard Business School, and, through RSE Ventures, the private investment firm he co-founded, an investor in some of America’s most beloved brands. He was a Guest Shark on ABC’s Shark Tank, and became the youngest press secretary in New York City history during the September 11th attacks. He then helped lead the effort to rebuild the World Trade Center site as Chief Operating Officer before becoming Executive Vice President of the New York Jets and then Vice Chairman of the Miami Dolphins.  In this episode, Hala and Matt will discuss:  - Why Burn the Boats is Matt’s most important project - How “familiarity breeds contempt” - Why your Plan B should be eliminated - Compound decision-making - Cultivating your own belief in yourself - Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “Self-reliance” - Why Matt brought Kim Kardashian to Harvard - Who is cut out for being an entrepreneur - Harnessing the power of Linkedin - And other topics… Matt Higgins is a self-made serial entrepreneur with deep operating experience that spans multiple industries over his twenty-five-year career. Higgins holds dual roles as co-founder and CEO of the private investment firm RSE Ventures. His business-building acumen also earned him a spot as a recurring guest Shark on ABC’s Shark Tank during seasons ten and eleven. He is a prolific investor in the direct-to-consumer space and leveraged this expertise to become an executive fellow at Harvard Business School, where he coteaches the course “Moving Beyond DTC.”  A lifelong New Yorker, Higgins was appointed press secretary for the New York City mayor’s office at age twenty-six—the youngest in history—managing the global media response during the 9/11 terrorist attacks before ultimately becoming chief operating officer of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation. After transitioning to the private sector, he spent fifteen years in senior leadership positions with two National Football League teams, starting as EVP of business operations for the New York Jets before serving as vice chairman of the Miami Dolphins for nearly a decade. Resources Mentioned: Matt’s Website: https://www.burntheboatsbook.com/ Matt’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matt-higgins-rse/ Matt’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/mhiggins Matt’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mhiggins/?hl=en Matt’s Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ManifestorMindset/ Matt’s Podcast The Manifestor Mindset: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-manifestor-mindset/id1517691358 Matt’s book Burn the Boats: https://www.amazon.com/Burn-Boats-Overboard-Unleash-Potential/dp/006308886X Shark, Matt Higgins: Attacking Entrepreneurship | E145: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/young-and-profiting-with-hala-taha/id1368888880?i=1000544767334 LinkedIn Secrets Masterclass, Have Job Security For Life: Use code ‘podcast’ for 40% off at yapmedia.io/course. More About Young and Profiting Download Transcripts - youngandprofiting.com   Get Sponsorship Deals - youngandprofiting.com/sponsorships Leave a Review - ratethispodcast.com/yap Watch Videos - youtube.com/c/YoungandProfiting Follow Hala Taha LinkedIn - linkedin.com/in/htaha/ Instagram - instagram.com/yapwithhala/ TikTok - tiktok.com/@yapwithhala Twitter - twitter.com/yapwithhala Learn more about YAP Media Agency Services - yapmedia.io/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This episode of YAP is sponsored in part by Shopify. Shopify simplifies selling online and in-person so you can focus on successfully growing your business. Sign up for a $1 per month trial period at Shopify.com-profiting. One common theme I have for successful founders is they refuse to accept things for the way they are. They just refuse to believe that this is how it has to be because this is how it's always done. 2.

They just always get back up again. You have to ask yourself, will you always get up again? Because the number one predictor of future success is past refusal to die. The idea of compounding applies equally as much to good decisions and bad decisions as it applies to money. If you could collapse the amount of time it takes for you to go ahead and implement a bold decision, if you could limit the energy leakage that you devote to contemplating, lack of success, you can pull forward your entire life. Everything has more time to exponentially compound.

What is up, young and profitors? You're listening to YAP, Young and Profiting podcast, where we interview the brightest minds in the world and unpack their wisdom into actionable advice that you can use in your daily life. I'm your host, Hallitaha. Thanks for tuning in and get ready to listen, learn and profit. Welcome to Young & Profiting Podcast, Matt. Thank you, it's so great to be back. I'm so happy that you're here, so Young & Profiter Matt Higgins is back again for second appearance on the podcast.

If you don't know Matt, he's a self-made serial entrepreneur, he holds dual roles as the co-founder and CEO of the private investment firm RSE Ventures. He's also a recurring guest on Shark Tank, its ABC's Number One show. He did that for seasons 10 and 11 and he's also an executive fellow at Harvard Business School. So the last time we had Matt on the show, we went super deep on his inspiring come-up story. We got schooled on some major lessons in entrepreneurship. He's got a crazy journey from dropping out of high school at 16 to working at McDonald's. He jump started his career as the youngest press secretary for the Mary of New York.

He's got a crazy story and it was one of my favorite conversations of 2021. So if you want to hear that conversation, go back to episode number 145 after you listen to this one and I'll try to play it as a appap classic when this episode airs, so it's easy to find. So in round two with Matt Higgins, we're going to focus on his new book, Burn the Boats. It's out February 14th and we're going to learn the winning formula to stop hedging and embark on a lifelong journey of breakout success. So Matt, congratulations is your first book, which I was sort of surprised to learn that it was your first book I figured you must have had a few books under your belt. Yeah, I wasn't sure the moral of story So I had to wait to figure it out

I love that as you know probably now I do my due diligence and lots of research on this show So I was you know Mozing around on good reads and I saw a note that you wrote to your fans and you're a man of many accomplishments And you wrote in that note that nothing you've done in your career matters as much as this book and you call it the most important project in your life. So why is that? Oh, you're getting me like sensitive going bring that I remember I'm remembering when I wrote

that note. And it's because I think I figured out the moral of the story. So for those who go back to my origin, I'll let you listen to it. I feel like I bore witness to a lot of suffering as a young person and you sort of wonder, like, not in a why me, but what for? That's the question I asked myself. And as time has gotten by and I've been blessed to be able to break out and do a lot of crazy things I've done and accumulated degree of wealth and influence, I just kept going back

to that moment in time, that origin story of being 16 and watching my mother struggle and then ultimately die and realize that there's no higher greater use of my talent and time and money than a mealier rating suffering. And then hopefully providing some of the answers to the test. And I have a lot of incredibly rich, deep, vulnerable conversations, people one-on-one. When you share a lot of your gut-wrenching details, a little bit of TMI, it makes people feel safe and open up to you. But you can only do that so much, and I live a lot of my life in guilds or anguish that, I don't have time, and my own goals, I wish I had time for you. My book is an attempt to scale. The things I've seen, the things I've learned, the pain I felt, and actually convince people, I am not an aberration. It's my book, but it's your

story, and I really believe that. And I killed myself for two years to make it interesting enough so that you're sort of hooked. And the Trojan Horse of the book, as I have all these incredible stories about great people, including some gut-wrenching details, but it's a little bit of an active inception to seep into your subconscious that there is a formula to achieve what I achieve. And I am no different than you. So if it weren't a work, if it was to connect with people and people

or to read and say, you move me in a positive direction, what could be more glorious than that? Yeah, I have authors on all the time, and I'm never like, this was such a good book. I really don't do that often, but I found myself like highlighting all these quotes,

like, this is a bomb ass quote, this is a bomb ass quote, and it was really entertained by the book. So great job writing it, very, very entertaining. Thank you. I love hearing that. Thank you. Even if you're just saying that, I don't really care. Thank you for telling me. I'm not just saying that. I don't, my fans know that I don't do that very often. Thank you. So let's talk about the title of the book. It's called Burn the Boats. And to me, that's a phrase that basically means destroy your plan B, give yourself no option to return or retreat. And to me, that's a phrase that basically means destroy your plan B, give

yourself no option to return or retreat. And I found out from you that it's actually an ancient phrase that dates all the way back to the Old Testament. And it's usually related two times of war. So I'd love for you to kind of give us a history lesson. What does burn the boats mean in your own words and share some stories from Sun Zoo and Caesar and other people who use it in war? Yeah. So throughout the course of my life, a different moment, this phrase, you know, burn the boats says, come up in a different context, right? So most people associated with Hernán Cortez and taking on the Aztecs, 15, 19, very bad man, I do not endorse any of his tactics, but most people assume that's where it comes

from, right? But when you, when you look backwards, actually, it shows up in art of war when Sunzu uses the phrase, when an army is outnumbered paraphrasing, you burn the boats and break the cooking pots, so they have no hankering after home. It shows up in Caesar when he crosses the Rubicon and on and on and on to the ancient Israelites. And what's fascinating is you're talking about multiple different languages, multiple different centuries. But military leaders tend to be tend to be somewhat ruthless realize that the way to get maximum output from your army is to extinguish any thought of retreat or any

plan B. So this idea is resurface threats course of my career. And then when I worked for the New York Jets, those out there listening who are sports fans, remember Rex Ryan and you know you know, around, you know, and I think it was 2011, I forget the year, we were taking on the Pittsburgh Steelers, we're an underdog, and Rex gave a speech to the team the night before. And Rex is like a big guy with, you know, big jowls

and he started crying in this emotive speech about Cortez and saying, you know, he burned the boats and all I'm asking you to do is give me one game. And the team went out there. They won the New York Times did a big article about that speech and how the team, the players said it unlocked another level of effort. Okay, interesting. After Shark Tank, I was on a panel with Kevin O'Leary and Mark Cuban and, you know, and Bethany. And I made some reference to the crowd about burn the boats, and Cubans like, burn the boats, what are you talking about? And I was like, oh, I thought this was

deep in like the, the Gestalt, you know, everyone sort of knew the phrase, and I realized, they don't. So that got me thinking, what are military generals and totally know about us that we don't fully embrace? And it's the idea that humans before and better without a safety plan. My purpose with this book is one to demonstrate to you that that is true. A lot of people listening to me right now say, what are you saying, Matt? I have to pay the rent.

I need a backup plan. That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that when you have less choices, you actually perform with more conviction and more focus. How do we take that idea and appropriate it for peacetime? I thought that was so impactful, like just kind of seeing the visual of people in war, you burn the boats and you're left to do nothing,

but fight to the death, right? It's a life or death situation. There's no chance of retreat. Then your analogy of using that in business is just so powerful. Let's talk about how you burn the boats in your life. Like I mentioned, I covered your story for an hour in episode number 145, but I know not all 50,000 people who are listening to this is actually gonna go back

and listen to that. So I know you've never been to war like Cesar or Sunzeo, but you did burn boats many times in your life. So talk to us about the times in your life where you didn't have a plan B, you burned the boats, and went on to accomplish your dreams. Yeah, absolutely. And one more historical context for those listening.

If you think it's an ancient concept and we've all outgrown it with social media or whatever, think about Zelinsky. A lot of people remember this. When he was invaded, conventional wisdom was that he was going to be toppled within days, even the United States, the CIA. All of our resources predicted this man did not have what it it takes to Ukrainians don't have what it takes. And he was offered in a secret conversation, you know, a ride by President Joe Biden. And he went public with the conversation and he said, I don't need a ride.

I need ammunition. And if you think about that was his way of telegraphing to the world, I have burned my boats. I will die here. And that was the warning. You're going to be assassinated. I have burned my boats. I will die here. And that was the warning. You're going to be assassinated. And he told his people, I'm all in. And look what it did as a catalyst. It actually enabled got everybody

to slightly escalate their commission, commitment until we were all in. Nobody would have predicted the United States would be spending billions and billions of dollars to support Ukraine. So a little bit more of the bringing that historical context up. So as it pertains to me, without going through

all the details, having grown up in object poverty, I was so desperate and depressed, taking care of my mother, and felt like if I don't do something radical to change our circumstances, I know how the story's gonna end. She's gonna pass away,

and I'm gonna live in Squalor. And I came up with this crazy idea after watching what she did. She was a high school dropout. She got her GD as an adult when she was 38 years old and enrolled in a community college. And when I was in seventh grade, earning like 375 at McDonald's, scraping gum under the tables, I was like, this got to be a better way. I read a newspaper ad that was inviting people to apply for a job delivering flyers. I think it was like $8 an hour. I was like, wait,

I can 2.5x my salary if I just get this thing called the college student How do I do that as fast as humanly possible? And I came up with this idea that I was gonna torpedo my education I was gonna drop out of high school at 16 and get a GED But I realized I once I started floating this Conventional wisdom was like woof You're gonna be branded a loser forever. You're never gonna shake the stigma people don't do that I'm like well people don't grow up on a dirty mattress with eating government cheese either. So that isn't working so great. And then I realized, I had, I don't know where this came

from, but I realized the only way for me to go forward with this plan is if I fail every single class and I sit in the back of this home room with the kids wearing beapers, doing drugs, whatever. If I just fail everything except for typing, I mentioned that before, that I will have no choice but to go forward. And so I share that as the genesis moment of my entire career. That single move to drop out of high school

and stick to my conviction to ignore conventional wisdom because they didn't have context and to implement my radical plan, pull forward my entire professional life by two years so that I went from a high school dropout one day to a college student at 16 the next day. And by 26, I was press secretary to the mayor of New York. I went from making 375-hour McDonald's to making $105,000 a year, all because I burned the boats and I gave myself no other option to retreat. I love that. And then when you were press secretary of New York, that also was a time where you burned

the boats. I think that's how you got that promotion, right? You actually quit your job. Tell us that story. There's a lot of talk about quiet quitting. Like, what do you do in the different circumstances? So I've kind of nuanced, you know, opinions on this. But at the end of the day, one, you have to always know your worth.

And everybody's always going to try to put you in a box. There are different managers out there. They're the good-hearted ones, which are the minority. The majority of people just extracting value from you. And if you don't know your own worth, you don't know how to set your boundaries. However, increased opportunity is a leading indicator of your future success.

So what that means is you're going to get more responsibility before you get more money. Compensation, renumeration is a lagging indicator. So you have to be a little bit of patience and accept the responsibility and try to make yourself indispensable. That's always been, I think, every job make myself indispensable. I'm not a quiet quitter, I'm an aggressive promoter and get what I want or I quit. And so at the mayor's office, I found myself ghost writing speeches at age 23, I think,

because I had been a writer. And I was doing all this great work, but I was ready to be promoted. And it wasn't happening for me. I was deputy press secretary at a young age. And the message I got back was, wait your turn, young man, right? In retrospect, I was out of my mind to think it was my turn, but I said, I have a better idea.

I'm gonna quit. And so I actually quit working for Mayor Giuliani twice. This is a different version of the Mayor Giuliani. America's come to know so well. I quit twice and you have to have the courage to sort of go in all in on what you know is true about yourself. And four months later they call me back after saying I would never be invited back and they offered me the job as press secretary in 26. So I share that story and the balance to say your first instinct should always be patient. Give people the benefit of the doubt that they're going to do right by you. Advocate for yourself,

but not too forcefully. But when the time comes and the balance tips and favor of the idea that you're being exploited, then you got to be prepared to quit. Yeah. I found that with my own journey as well. When I was 19 years old, I worked at a radio station called Hot 97 for free for three years. And when I wanted to pay job and they refused to give me one, I left. I started my own website, blew up, became a very popular entertainment website. And then all the same DJs who wouldn't pay me minimum wage started hiring me to host their parties. And then all of a sudden I went from intern to peer like on the flyers with them and everything. And it happened right away because I just took control and I was like, you know what, I'm not appreciated. I'm just doing something on my own and they came back

knocking. And I find that a lot of people are so worried about like taking that big risk and burning those boats when it's the fastest way towards your success. It helps people appreciate you more. I feel 100% and for those who don't know this phrase is really important for the rest of your life. Familiarity breeds contempt. It's annoying. It shouldn't be that way, but that's just a way a lot of humans are wired that when they know someone and they're in a desperate situation or they had they need a problem, they always look outside the organization. They're looking for that fresh savior. So understanding that managers often are wired that way tells you that one you have to know your own worth,

people don't respect those who don't respect themselves. And so you gotta be willing to take the gamble. And once you take the gamble like what happened to you, everyone looks at you differently. Oh, you had the courage to quit. You must be valuable because you bet on yourself. So hard thing for a lot of people to come to terms with because they don't like conflict

and it feels like asserting your worth feels either greedy or unbecoming. I think the opposite at the end of the day, like you got to know your own worth and you got to be willing to bet on yourself. Totally. So, let's talk about how we've been programmed to have a plan B and to hedge our risk because your book really turns this idea on its head. So what is the problem with having a contingency plan or a plan B? So I wrote the book very, you know, in a sort of bombastic way to provoke a reaction because of a lot of the reaction from people is like,

that's not true. I need risk mitigation. I didn't say toss your risk mitigation overboard and be recklessly irresponsible with your kids 529 plan. It would be a long title too. I said toss plan B overboard and what that means is advocate for a process. When you're making bold moves, there's a template and a blueprint for how to do it. And by definition, you're going to feel uncomfortable. You're going to feel like an imposter. A lot of things are going to challenge you. So you need to make provisions for the journey. The first provision you need to make is to synthesize and contemplate the worst possible thing that could happen.

What's the worst possible thing? I quit this job and I didn't get the job I wanted. I'm not as good as I think I am. And then I got to go back, you know, hand in hand and say, can I get my job back? Yeah, they'll probably take me back. What you find is when you process the worst possible scenario at the beginning of the journey, you can then refer back to that exercise and say, when your mind plays tricks on you, what if what if you say, no, not now, I already

did that. I already processed the worst case scenario. And it turns out I could live with the worst case scenario. And the alternative of doing nothing is actually worse than a speculative possibility that this is going to go terribly wrong. And analyzing why people are afraid to make the move, the number one reason is because they invoke risk. But they have not taken the steps to synthesize and actually process, well, what is the magnitude of that risk? It's an excuse. We don't want to ask the question about what's the worst possible thing to happen because we don't

want to know the answer because we don't want to be challenged to take that step. So I'm deliberately trying to provoke you into saying, just hear me out. Just ask yourself if you were to actually take that step, what's the worst possible thing to happen? I am the most paranoid risk taker you're gonna have in this show. Like I don't take a step without agonizing

all the things that are gonna go wrong. When I've taken a move, like even this book, I've included some details in this book that make me cringe, like, oh, why'd you share this? And then I remember, you already processed the worst case scenario. You're talking about your divorce because there's somebody out there who's desperate and broken right now and you decide to send a little signal to them that it was going to be okay, even though you prefer not to mention it, you already did it. And so even myself every single day as I make these ball moves, I'm revisiting the exercise that

I did at the beginning to ask what's the worst that could happen. I love that. And is there any data or science that backs up the fact that contingency plans and plan V actually sort of slow us down from what we want? Yeah, I for those who I'm a science junkie, I tried to hold back so I didn't bore you with my book, but I love studies. I'm always reaching for a study to prove

that I can get through something or disprove something that's happening to me. But there was a great study on a Wharton in 2014 where they just decided to assess what is the impact of just contemplating plant-based. And I won't go into the study details, but it's in the book. But what would happen if you had two groups of students?

And one was told suggested, you're allowed to think about another way to succeed, just allowed to, not even start pursuing. And what they found in a empirically measurable way that not only did, were students less likely to be successful by just thinking about it, they cared a lot less to actually achieve the result. They measured both desire and they measured likely success. So it's really fascinating and I bring it up in different contexts. But science 100% bears it out that the mere contemplation of an alternative to achieve your result will make it much more likely that you ever get what you want in life. So the two statements that I just said a second ago and that statement must always be together.

I'm not saying don't process the worst case scenario. I'm saying doing it the beginning of the journey and then later on when your mind plays tricks on you or that frenemy tries to undermine your ambition, you'd be like, no, no, no, I already thought it through before I started. Yeah, I think that is such great advice. So like I mentioned, I kept highlighting quotes in your book. One of them I really liked was by learning how to confidently burn the boats and set a match to whatever corrosive plan B you're credoing, you will collapse the time delay between insight and action and you will reap exponential returns.

So I thought this is really important. I'd love for you to break it down for us. Oh, I love that. So I love that you pulled that sentence out. It's just warm buffet. Those of you who are on Buffett fans out there, talks a lot about compound interest is the most important principle in all finance. And he's right, caveat.

The idea of compounding applies equally as much to good decisions and bad decisions as it applies to money. So let's talk about good decisions. If you could collapse the amount of time it takes for you to go ahead and implement a bold decision, if you could limit the energy leakage that you devote to contemplating lack of success or the frenemy is trying to undermine you, if you could collapse that, you can pull forward your entire life. I share my autobiographical details not because I think I'm particularly important or it's particularly compelling, it's because I'm trying to illustrate what happens if you drop out of high school

at 16 in Star College? What happens if you do what Hamilton does in a play and he writes like he's running out of time? If you always treat everything with a degree of urgency and you act more decisively, everything has more time to exponentially compound. I am simply the byproduct of compounding of a human life that started a little bit earlier.

So I love that sentence and it's such a hard thing to communicate in words, which is why I use all the storytelling in the book. Yeah, I love it too. I mean, as a CEO and entrepreneur, that hit me so hard because I was like, man, I need to make decisions faster because I know what the right thing is to do, but sometimes I get too emotionally attached. I feel bad for people, whatever it is, when I just know sometimes the right thing is to do, but sometimes I get too emotionally attached. I feel bad for people, whatever it is, when I just know sometimes the right thing to do is like cut the cord,

move on, make a decision fast, because you'll be more successful faster. We all know what the right thing to do is inside most of the time. That's the bottom line, right? I mean, that's the point of the book. We all know what the right thing to do inside. Interesting. I'm my Harvard class. I teach at HPS, and I bring in all these incredible founders and leaders. And we always leave the last one minute. For them, what's the most important message you want to communicate to the students? So I have like this longitudinal study of incredible CEOs,

Kim Card, actually, and like a wide range of people, what's the message they want to leave people with? And by and large, the most successful people I bring to the class always have the same consistent message, which is, don't overthink it. You already know what you need to do. So if you can figure out how to do it, you already know you need to do faster than the world is telling you to do it, you will be successful.

And those people tend to put together the most outlandish dreams that I'm like, how did that 28 year old pull it out? And when they give that talk, it's like, oh, because the thing you knew more than anything else was your capacity to just figure it out. Let's hold that thought and take a quick break with our sponsors. Young and profitors, do you have a brilliant business idea, but you don't know how to move forward with it? Going into debt for a four-year degree isn't the only path to success. Instead, learn everything you need to know about running a business for free by listening to the Millionaire University Podcast.

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Find the Millionaire University podcast on Apple Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. I love that. So I know you mentioned in your book, you've got lots of different stories, and you do tell a lot of different stories about entrepreneurs from low lad to Airbnb, all these great success stories. Can you walk us through some of your favorite examples of an entrepreneur who burned the boat and you know went on to achieve their dreams? Yeah, my favorite so many good stories in a book. It was fun for the book. When you get to write a book, you get to celebrate all the people around you. And so I have been around so many strong female founders and women in my life who have made

a huge difference. And so it gave me a chance to showcase them, which is amazing. So in the aggregate, those are my favorite stories. One of them actually is about a woman who rejected a job for me, only to build her own firm and sold it at the same time as I sold the firm that we were creating. My favorite story in the book, though, is about a Irish bartender named Aiden Keeho, who came to the country with nothing except tremendous charisma and drive. He had a win from being a bartender to creating a cybersecurity company that I had purchased.

And Aiden and I became very close, but I noticed, and he was young, that there were certain things that he didn't want to deal with. And I go through the archetypes of different types of leadership, and I would put him in the category of a martyr, the CEO who takes on everything on their shoulders, because they're probably not wanting to deal with some type of conflict to get the best out of somebody else

that they take on every job. But nobody's a super human individual, and ultimately, crack started showing up in the business. And so about three years in, we had taken on a new investor. The business model wasn't playing out. He had tolerated certain employees that he probably should have tolerated. It just wasn't working. And I get a phone call one night. I remember I stepped out of the restaurant to take the call. And he's through tears. He says to me, Matt, I'm sorry,

like I failed you. I know you bought the business. I'm so sorry, I'm gonna resign in December. And as he's talking, I hear this beeping in the background. And I'm like, wait, what is that noise? Where are you? Because I'm in the hospital. My daughter is getting a test done. We're not sure what's going on with her health. And I was like, Aidan, first thing, when you're done, I'm perfectly fine giving you this

phone call. I'll let you know. I'll be your friend. I'll be the first person to let you know. I think you failed. Second thing, you need to be okay with the possibility that it won't work out. You're carrying the weight of the world on your shoulders and it's forcing you to not face things head on because you're scrambling to stay alive another day. You actually need to contemplate the worst day scenario.

Hang up the phone. Call me if you're ready to do the work again, whatever. Calls me back a few days later and he goes, it was such a relief to contemplate that this might not work out, and that it would be okay, that it's given me the, I'm ready to go to work. Long story short, I always use industrial psychologists. I'm just that person. I just love looking inside my head.

And we bring in industrial psychologists. It was one of the most uncomfortable reports that I've seen anybody go through. And those reports supposed to be private, even I don't read it, because it's the able to do that. I'm going to be able to do that. I'm going to be able to do that. I'm going to be able to do that. I'm going to be able to do that. I'm going to be able to do that.

I'm going to be able to do that. I'm going to be able to do that. I'm going to be able to do that. I'm going to be able to do that. I'm going to be able to do that. I'm going to be able to do that. I'm going to be able to do that. I'm going to of work to do. And you already know what's broken. In two years, he turned the entire company around. An incredible success story creates a culture of self-awareness and transparency

and sells it for nine figures. And he is one of the most talented human beings in my life, the person I turn to for guidance all the time. And the reason why I share that story is it shows the power of self-awareness. It shows what happens when you stop looking without, but turn the lens within and are not afraid to find out what's there. Why am I not functioning the right way? What trauma have I not dealt with? So it's an incredible story. So in this story, it's almost like he burned the boat

on himself. That's my point. So I love that you said that, by the way. Well, I love talking to you because you always hit on the like the nuance. In my case, I'm using boat as a metaphorical boat. It's not the like Cortez boat where we literally can't eat and the boat is on fire It's the things in your life that are preventing you from fully committing to your full potential Internal and external the image on the cover for those who haven't seen it

This is the image on the cover if you notice it's meant to actually trigger it looks like a paper boat in a child's bathtub And the reason why I went with that image is because so many of the boats that we need to burn actually go all the way back to childhood. It sees legacy issues that we carry with us. And my journey began ultimately when I was brought to my knees with the idea that I need to shed my shame. I need to come to terms with the fact that my childhood was torture. And I watched my mother die, powerless, and I have a lot of resentment against the world and I need to process that.

So boats is a metaphor for everything in internal external that you need to literally burn in order to do what you were meant to do on this earth. Yeah, beautiful, beautiful message. So your book is to split into three parts. I thought it could give everybody sort of like a high level of what they can expect. If you can briefly go over it, the first one is get in the water,

no turning back and then build more boats. of what they can expect. If you can briefly go over it, the first one is getting the water, no turning back, and then build more boats. Yeah, so a big picture. The boat is meant to, boat is promised on the idea that the joy of living is in the striving. There's a ton of science, and I talked to upon in the book

that demonstrates why do we feel melancholy after we finish the marathon? Why does an Olympian suffer from depression after the games? And it's because what we really enjoy in life is the pursuit of our full potential is trying to like, what's the ceiling of my potential? What did the, what did God put me on this earth for? What am I capable of? We are all endlessly trying to figure that out. But that's not reinforced in society. What's reinforced is the podium, where the anthem is playing. What's not reinforced is the 4 a.m. jogs, you know, in the cold, whatever.

So the whole book is premised on this idea that the joy of living is in this driving and I am 100% sure of that. So then the question is, the book is meant to construct and three parts that journey, that cycle. So the first is how to prepare yourself for the journey. And it begins with self auditing.

It begins with increasing your belief in your own intuition. It begins with clearing the deck, so to extending the boat metaphor, of the things that are getting in the way of you trusting your own intuition. Then it takes you to, how do I stay on this journey? How do I deal with the things that try to derail me all the time, that try to undermine me as I'm going on this journey. And the corporate saboteurs in this world who are throwing rocks at you and you feel it, but you can't articulate it. And I go into how to put words to those things that you into it about your manager or whatever's trying to hold you back. And then lastly, how to stay on that, how to continue,

how to when you achieve something, how to consolidate your gains so that you're not what my partner calls a grasshopper? I did this, Matt Southarver. Well, now he's doing a TV show. How does he make sure Harvard's successful? How to ensure that you consolidate your gains so that you can build this life of perpetual pursuit, but you don't look back and behind you is half measures. Like, because that'll erode your self-esteem. So I also talk in the book about how to consolidate your gains, how to use the fact that through habituation things do get easier the second time you do it. Second time I went on Shark Tank, I didn't have imposter syndrome the first time I did.

So I can take that extra energy that I was using to combat imposter syndrome and now redirected to teaching at Harvard where I did have imposter syndrome. So it's again, it's meant, and forgive me for the metaphor, but the boat metaphor does kind of work, but it's meant to be a narrative framework to take those three aspects and then convince you and show you how to begin the journey again and why it gets easier and easier each time. Yeah, I'm super happy you had that breakdown because I want to dig into a lot of things that you just said. So let's talk about the importance of trusting ourselves. If you don't trust yourself, you miss the chance to be extraordinary.

I always say something similar. I'm always telling people like, you gotta believe that life is limitless, and then you also gotta believe in yourself. To me, those are like two rules of life if you wanna be massively successful. So talk to us about your guidance for gaining more trust in yourself

and your skills and your talents because I feel like a lot of people have a hard time actually trusting themselves. Yeah, that's, by the way, I love what you said about them, limitless possibility. I was thinking about this book. This book only resonates and only works if you want to believe that anything's possible. If you don't want to believe that anything's possible or want to believe the dies cast or the deck is stacked against you, the book doesn't work. I won't resonate. So I totally agree with you that anything is possible in terms of cultivating your own belief

in yourself. It begins by asking, honestly, why don't you believe in yourself? And accepting the simple premise that you have one fundamental little job on this earth, which is to love yourself. And that you can't outsource that job to mom or dad, to your spouse, anybody. You have to believe that your fundamental purpose on this earth is first to love yourself. And then second to say, okay, what's preventing me from actually having faith, actually believing that I have the answers. And honestly, a lot of it, maybe I have confirmation bias because of my childhood, I do think a lot of it comes from the nature and the influences that are around us that undermine us. A lot of people are in toxic relationships. I talk about this in a book where they have a partner who is like, well, I really like Bill because

he puts me in my place. He brings me back down to earth. He grounds me. I talk about this book like, ground wants to be grounded. Air? Bear planes are grounded when does a traffic jam and newer airport like, I don't want to be grounded. And so to be honest, when you audit, what's preventing me honestly from believing that I actually have good instincts, that I have good experience, right? That I may have good judgment. If usually is something in your environment that has influenced and undermined your confidence.

So start there. Sometimes it's anxiety, which can be treated in so many different ways by staying present through meditation, through medication, but for recognizing that we all need a degree of anxiety to perform at our best, I talk in the book about this balance and the study that found that there is a state of optimal, optimal anxiety too little, and you're not motivated to do your best too much in your paralyzed and I illustrate what both of those look like so summarize one audit what might be preventing you from believing in your instincts and to if you have something fundamental potentially in your in your factory settings. Well, then let's mitigate it by embracing it understanding it not be ashamed of it and maybe treating it through medication or meditation or whatever it takes. I love what you're saying here. What you said about your environment and the people that you surround yourself really hit home for me.

I was with somebody for 11 years basically married and he didn't want me to be an entrepreneur and I started my company and he was furious with me and I actually had to leave our house, move out. And as soon as I did that, my whole career skyrocketed. I got on the cover of podcast magazine. It became a number one podcast. I'm my company, like $5 million in two years, 16 employees, all this stuff. As soon as we broke up, because like he said, like, if you're with

somebody who doesn't want you to shine and grow, I was doing great. I had a great corporate career, whatever, but I was as great as he wanted me to be. And then as soon as I wasn't with him, I was allowed to be my full self and have my full potential. So sometimes even, I guess I love him, he's my friend, but like, even to people that love you, they can't see your own potential. Only you know what you're capable of. Can we go deep, Brenna? I love this conversation because you may be different, but often I find there are two fundamental reasons why people will accept that situation. And one is they either don't believe they deserve more, so it's just

lack of self-loathe or two, they don't believe there's anything better. It's not like we have a ton of reps. We can remember our past life or whatever you believe and like, well, I remember, you know, so and so, that was a much better relationship, and we're all starting out. We honestly don't know better. And then a lot of ways were conditioned to believe that somebody will better relationship, and we're all starting out. We honestly don't know better, and then a lot of ways were conditioned to believe that somebody will complete you, that we're not born whole. And the reality is we are 100% born whole. It took me going through my divorce to recognize, like objectively, I am born whole, technically, I am born whole.

I can only see the world through my own two eyes. I don't know what red looks like for you. And so as a result, we are technically born whole, but we're not taught those things. We're not actually conditioned to believe any of them. And it's very insidious because then when you align yourself with the wrong person, it can unravel your entire life. I talk a lot about my partner, Sarah, and not in like a cliche way like, oh, he really likes this way. Like, no, no, Sarah is the reason I'm on Shark Tank. She's the reason I teach her Harvard.

She's the reason I've been so successful because she's a force multiplier. She derives pure joy out of helping me unleash my ability and I derive pure joy out of watching her shine. It is out there, but if you don't believe you deserve it or don't believe it exists, you won't go find it. And I think that's the reason why a lot of people stay and say, I heavily wait the insidious impact of people who are in your foxhole who don't, who aren't rooting for you.

Because nobody, nobody can win. Now I'm going to war metaphors, but true, nobody can win a two front war. Nobody can, not you, not a country, not anybody. Yeah, I love that. So I hope you guys take heat, especially my young listeners, Your partner in life is so important. And once you feel like somebody who's around you that you're spending a lot of time with is actually trying to hold you back, that's time to move on. Even though it's going to hurt short term, long term, you're going to be way happier, I promise. And that's why I stick into cute people are really dangerous. If you have a partner, if you're listening out there and somebody is actually always trying

to be a little bit like, we have the one make you afraid of the danger on the other side or to make you feel as if you're not equipped to handle it. One, they shouldn't be doing that. That's not a friend. But two, they're probably doing it because they're insecure. That if you shine too brightly, you'll leave them. You'll start believing yourself more. And it stems from the fact that there's something they feel is ugly about themselves, right? But look how corrosive that is. Now you're with somebody who's insecure, has low self worth. Now they're using that to undermine you to destabilize you so that

you stay put. You're not just going to stay put physically in the relationship. You're going to stay put in every other area of your life too. If you don't feel like you're worth worthy of a good partner, spouse, boyfriend, girlfriend, you're not going to feel like you're worthy of a raise or worthy of a better job. It cascades throughout your entire life. So please believe if I say one thing, that person is out there who could be the greatest force multiplier of your life, but it starts with knowing that you deserve it.

Yeah, oh my gosh. Powerful conversation. Yeah, I love talking to you and I love this topic. I honestly, I don't care about talking about NFL teams or whatever the stuff I've done, I care about talking about these issues because they're more important than anything else. 100% nobody talks about them enough.

So let's talk about this habituation concept. So in the third part of one of the votes, you say that habituation can hurt us. What do you mean by that? And why should we want to take more risks? I think that we should not habituate our behavior any more than necessary to extract more from ourselves. What I mean by that is certain things

are more efficient by habituating, right? Like certain routines make sense. Certain things about self-care make sense, meditating, which I don't do enough of. Things that make sense that unlock you. But however, a lot of society tries to make you conform to a consistency so that you stay in a box. And we treat a degree of inconsistency or excitableness or open-mindedness as if it's

haphazard or you don't have a plan, right? So there's a lot of pressure trying to make sure that your behavior looks consistent. And what does that matter? Because a lot of people say, well, I can't, can't quit the job after six months because I'm going to look flaky. I can't change my major because my dad's going to be disappointed in me because I'm always trying to do something different every day. So like there are a lot of forces in this world that are trying to organize your behavior.

It goes back to our previous conversation. Why do we think they're doing that? Why do those forces exist? Because people don't want to put the pressure on themselves to do the same thing. So if the entire world is being told, stay in your box and stophazard, then at the end of the day, you're eventually going to conform to it. So I'm trying to articulate this unsaid force in the universe that tries to get people to behave consistency for no good reason to open your mind like, who says I can't quit that job? And by the way, why do I give a shit if somebody's going

to judge me? It's a crappy job. I want to get out of here. Emerson, one of my favorite writers on planet earth, if I was on an island and I could only take one essay with me, forget about me with my book. Don't take my book. Take self-reliance from Emerson. He calls it, I had this idea of foolish consistency that's meant to play key people around you. That's what I talk about. Make sure that you're not habituating things in order to please some constituency so that you don't look flaky. Okay, so let's talk about. Make sure that you're not habituating things in order to please some constitiancy so that you don't look flaky. Okay, so let's talk about a gut sandwich. So you talk about a gut sandwich in your book.

You give the story of Jeff Bezos and Amazon. I'd love to understand what a gut sandwich is and how we can use it in business. What's great about writing a book as you get to make up words for concepts that are in your head. So I've taken the liberty make them, well, gut sandwich is one that I've made up. And it's a way to articulate,

like what are the ways in which breakthroughs happen? And what I have found, and observing founders that I work with, looking at breakthrough innovation, right? They begin with intuition about the way that how the world could work or should work. Something is broken, Lola is a good example in the book, right?

But there are tons of others. Hey, something is happening to us or being put in our bodies that isn't good and to it shouldn't work that way and there's a better way to do it, right? So usually that's how innovation stem. Now, what happens next? We all look for data or confirmation, confirmation from friends, from people.

Again, I talk in the book about how be very careful with who you consult with your nascent dreams because they're fragile. And since a lot of people have a negative bias, you wanna make sure you can solve pragmatic optimists. People are inclined to think positively and think about potential, but can give you honest feedback.

So we consult people and then we look for data to support our intuition. Here's the problem. Opportunity arise before the tipping point of evidence, and I'll say that again, opportunity arise before the tipping point of evidence, meaning that the real breakthrough innovations happen before there's going to be any confirmation in data.

And so, if you end the inquiry based on data and want data to give you the green light, most of the time data will give you a red light, and that's where innovation dies. So, I came up with this idea of God's sandwich to give you out green light, most of the time data will give you a red light. And that's where innovation dies. So I came up with this idea of God sandwich to give you out there a confidence to say, I'm never going to find enough data to support my groundbreaking innovation because it's arriving before the tipping point. I'm going to have to make the call based on intuition. And every single breakthrough I've seen has been based upon intuition as to how things should work or will work.

Yeah, to me, this was such an interesting part of the book that fact that data actually can deter you from starting something before you even start. And too many people are numbers based, facts based, my business partner is such a numbers guy. I'm totally opposite. And he was like, we got to follow the data, follow the data. I'm like, no, I'm falling in my heart. Like, let's go this way. I do that every time and always win, you know? Well, but let's put it, but to stay with that, but how that's a great point, like to stay with that, the end of the day, if we were to use these two words,

who is most likely to make breakthrough, groundbreaking innovations or revolutions in society, and operator executor or a visionary? And of course, you'll say a visionary, right? So, but the visionary is not operating on data. So if those are the ones responsible for birthing, the best things in life and of course you'll say a visionary, right? So, but the visionary is not operating on data. So if those are the ones responsible for birthing, the best things in life, of course they weren't operating on data when they made the choice.

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case to take your business to the next level today. Again, that Shopify.com.sashProfiting.com-profiting. Shopfide.com-profiting.all lowercase. This is Possibility powered by Shopify. Yeah, and I think people get that wrong, especially nowadays, everyone's like data analytics, big data, whatever it is. And so like, we're like programmed, oh, just follow the numbers, follow the numbers. It will tell you what to do. And it's like, there's lots of nuances that you need to be aware of. I love the story of Lola. I thought that was great because I'm a woman. I remember for years, I was like, what is all these chemically enhanced products? It's so bad for us. I'm going to get cancer from these things. There's nothing else out there. And I always felt that way before a product like Lola came out. And it's just so interesting that the data

told them otherwise, but they just went for it knowing that there was, if they felt like that, then other women must be feeling like that. I love the Lola story too because I'm a guy, obviously. So as a guy, one step or move, and you're listening to them explain why this isn't how product should be made, and they are envisioning an entire new category, you would say, like, well, that makes sense. And actually, when I consulted a lot of women to say what's they think is like, no, it'll never work. Women have too much brand loyalty to their existing Pradil never switch. Isn't that interesting? I would love for you to share this story for some people are like, low, low what, right?

Lowla is a feminine care products that use, you know, much better ingredients. They eliminated bleach. I mean, start there, right? And just all the ways in which it's made just more enlightened, right, big picture. And they started that movement, now there are a bunch of other products on the market. So it was actually started by my partner, Jesse's wife, and as I was deciding whether to invest or not, and I'm consulting women on it,

and by and large, the feedback was people would never switch. And I like sharing that because this is the consumer. So the end consumer was predicting human behavior and the aggregate that they would be more loyal to the brand. And even the end consumer couldn't anticipate how they would respond to Lola's messaging once Lola explained what's in your feminine care product. So the founders had to say, I need to look past

that initial feedback, including my wife too. She was like, I don't think it's gonna be successful. And in the end of the day, they had to say, I need to look past that initial feedback, including my wife, too. She was like, I don't think it's going to be successful. And in the end of the day, they had to go on intuition instead of data. And a lot of VCs also said the same thing. You can't take on these big juggernauts. Women won't switch too much brand loyalty, and they did it anyway. Yeah, I love it.

And now they're everywhere. I think they're in like Target and they're pretty much everywhere. Walmart, everything. Yeah. So let's switch gears. Let's talk about vision. So like we mentioned they're pretty much everywhere. Paul Martin, everything. Yeah. So, let's switch gears. Let's talk about vision. So, like we mentioned, you teach at Harvard.

And I heard you, were you the one who brought Kim Kardashian to Harvard? I was the one who brought Kim Kardashian to Harvard, which I haven't talked about. If you want to talk about that for a second or? Yeah, I saw all the pictures and stuff. I had no idea you were the one who brought her in. Yeah, that's my course I created with my, with my, with my fellow faculty members.

And it's a, it's devoted to direct to consumer. So we bring it over the course of a week. It's crazy intense and it's very well curated, you know, up to 20 classes over a course of a week. And it's meant to, it's a really dissect the Omni Channel journey, which usually starts with direct to consumer, but morphs into retail. So all those brands that people out there know and love, it's hymns and all birds and all these great consumer brands, they usually began as DTC. I put this Lala Paloza of Econ at Harvard Business School, which is amazing. I've been doing it for four years. So we always like to bring in a couple of celebrity founders that have crossed over into trying to become business people, because they also expose a lot of own

ability. You know, celebrity brands as much as they have a huge following on the on the fan side, they tend by investors tend to think like, is this for real? Are you really committed? They actually have to overcome a lot of the hangover from celebrity. So we brought in Scarlett Johansson as a good friend of mine. She's zoomed in from set. Bobby Brown has a good friend of mine. Bobby Brown cosmetics.

Now I'm really name dropping, but is what it is. And then Kim Kardashian, which was fascinating. And I'll tell you why. So Kim Kardashian co-founded a business called Skims. Everybody probably knows that. This business is such an extraordinary success that I don't think it gets a fraction of the coverage it can as simply a business case study. So we wanted to bring it in and say,

why is Skes so successful? And one of the core themes that played out over the course of the week was DTC is really struggling right now because customer acquisition costs are very expensive. A lot of these companies became very dependent upon the pandemic because everybody was home. It was easy to get customers. It was cheap. So we people became dependent. And suddenly, pandemic ends. The model doesn't work. Acquisitions expensive supply chains up. Kim Kardashian's company, Skims has defied those trends. Her customer acquisition cost are very low,

relative to the average order. And the reason why is when you have a celebrity at the top of a brand, storytelling becomes everything. And they're able to use organic customer acquisitions through storytelling, social sharing, to subsidize their acquisition cost and bring those numbers down a lot. So we bring Kim in with her co-founder Yens for an hour and 45 minutes. The students at Harvard Business School do not hold back. They asked every question you might ask, how long will celebrity

last and like to delve into the authenticity? And I told Kim afterwards, I was so surprised the extent to which she held her own with the best founders in the country. So thoughtful, so nuanced. I said, is there a reason you don't share that? No, I'm not, it's not like I watch keeping up with the Kardashians or have any exposure to Kim Kardashian. And I would admit it if I did.

But I did not perceive her as being this extraordinary female founder. I was so impressed. And she had sent to me off to the side like, I want to share that. But like, back in the day, Eid didn't think it was that interesting. And you know, she just, so for me, I was fascinated to see this incredible female founder who I don't believe gets a fraction of the coverage she deserves. So it created a great backlash, which was entertaining to watch. A lot of people saying, what is Kim Kardashian deserve to be at Harvard? She deserved to be there just as much as some of the greatest founders in the country

that came to that class. Pretty remarkable. Really interesting. Now you make me want to try to get Kim Kardashian on the show. You should. I'm mostly inviting all the negative tweets that will come out of here. But I don't really care. I like it is what it is.

And she was, she was remarkable. Yeah. By the way, I'm also an investor in fashion disclosed that I'm a investor in skims. I invested in the last round, which is like three billion dollar valuation. So I'm obviously you can reject everything I just said, but I thought she was amazing.

I teach a lot about personal branding and there's something really powerful when you have pull marketing rather than push marketing. A lot of founders get it wrong. They're pushing ads, pushing ads. Like you said, high acquisition costs, unsustainable. They think they're doing great, but really they're just pouring money into something. When you have a content marketing machine,

like you said storytelling, spokesperson, things just come to you. You don't have to chase it all the time. So that's what she's getting. People are finding out about it organically. And to me, that's so powerful. I've been thinking about this a lot, that we need to migrate the KPI,

that we analyze businesses on. We need to go from customer acquisition cost CAC to customer conversation cost, CCC, because anybody in America listening to, or you could be a small business listening to your pockets, I don't care where you are, you have the ability to create a conversation around your brand that starts with making people

evangelical about you or your product. First, deliver something exceptionally surprising to light, and then you need to foster a conversation. It begins by having the confidence that what you have to say is worthy. When I talk to small businesses a lot, or LinkedIn, whatever, they're like, man, nobody cares about what I'm doing. I'm like, I said true, 20 people on your block kind of care. And I think to be successful in E-Com especially, but in business in general, this in America now, you need to have the loudest microphone on your block. And it's not hard to do,

it's actually draw a page from Kim Kardashian. The good part is, she's competing against civilization. Lots of conversations have, when you're in, in a Main Street USA, most small businesses around you aren't putting in the time because they don't believe that what they have to say is important. It's a lot easier to kind of compete. So I've been thinking about this idea a lot about CCC rather than cat, customer conversation,

how are you fostering it? You've done it yourself and you see the benefits. And you know why customer acquisition costs are so high. It makes sense. If the conversations are happening everywhere around us 24 hours a day on TikTok, on Instagram, it would make sense that the interloper IE the ad is going to have to pay a lot of money to interrupt that conversation. But if you are part of that conversation, you pay nothing. Yeah, it reminds me of something I had the founder of the NPS survey, Fred Reichheld on the show a while ago. And he talks about this KPI of like customer referrals

and that nobody's looking at how many people are telling their friends about your product as a future projection of growth, right? People are just looking at like the revenue that's coming in and not necessarily like, well, how many people are referring your product. That would actually be an amazing metric because even back to my point about customer conversation metric

that it really, from the beginning at the time, that's how stories were passed down, was word of mouth, that's how people get confused. And it would make sense that somebody's going to trust somebody who is less biased, who isn't being paid. They're going to trust that recommendation, and they paid shill or the ad, which is the worst form of shilling, right?

And yet there's no way to measure it, actually, and therefore it's undervalued. That's what I love about the book process, but you'll see one day when you write a book like that you can work really hard to try to improve your ranking on Amazon, try to sell a lot of books, whatever. But that only works for a very short period of time. The cream always rise to the top with books because people vote through referral. They vote for reviews. It's like one of the last pure forms of like the echo chamber. And you probably noticed too,

whenever I read a book that's pretty high up on the Times list or Wall Street Journal that's been on there for like three, four weeks, the book is always damn good. Like I never been like, I don't get why this is on list. It's like, Exactly. And so that's just a proxy for what happens

when there's word of mouth. Because in a book world, you really can't spend money efficiently to like, advertise, it doesn't work. So it's basically because people like the book. Yeah. And I hope that happens to you. I hope I see you. New York Times bestseller, Wall Street Journal bestseller. I have a feeling it's going to happen from your mouth to God's ears and your listeners. Yeah. Go buy the book. Okay. So like we were just talking about, you teach at Harvard Business School. And in your book, you mentioned that sometimes they seek advice from you about what they should do after their college career. So what private equity firms should they go to,

what consulting firm. And you always tell them to take a step back and you say, I don't want to hear what you want to be. I want to know who you want to be. And I thought this was a great lesson for all my listeners. Yeah, I, I, I'm always amazed. I went to Queens College and I imagine if I ever went to Harvard Business School, I would have a care in the world because you went to Harvard Business School, you'll get every job you ever want, your life has been de-risk. And having these conversations with students the first year I taught, I was like, wow, you're just as vulnerable as anybody else. You're just as sort of confused trying to figure things out.

And what I would find is to have so much pressure to sort of know the answer of like, which private equity firm are you going to go to? Should I go back to consulting? You know, 10% of the student body is being subsidized by a consulting firm. Anyway, all these very tactical questions, but if I would ask them the big picture existential questions, they had put so little effort into and figuring those out. And what do I mean by that? I think the questions of what kind of environment do I thrive in? Do I want to be in a place where it's very prescriptive? And I have

a boss telling me exactly what I want it, what I should be doing? Or do I want to be in a place where I have the freedom to innovate? Do I want to be in an environment where I'm in charge? Or do I want to be part of an army? Am I a creator or am I a builder? Like, they sound so obvious, but a lot of people bypass these questions of like, what environment will I thrive in? And so I always try to break it down. Hey, like, let's not worry about whether you go to KKR or Blackstone.

Let's find out. Do you really want to be in private equity? Do you, and like, just because somebody told you that you should be a founder because you've been watching videos on Instagram about hustle culture, do you really think you have what it takes to be a founder? Do you even want to be? And it's like, not really.

I kind of, I don't want to be in charge. So a lot of times I find that there's like a gravitational pull that people follow that make them try to focus on the doing rather than, you know, who they want to be. So one last question before we start to close out the interview. You just alluded to it made me think of the question. So obviously you're you're around entrepreneurs all the time, right? You invest in companies, you're a serial entrepreneur, you're friends with all entrepreneurs,

you know what it takes to be an entrepreneur. And there's equally, you can have a great life not being an entrepreneur, not everybody has to be an entrepreneur. This is pretty much an entrepreneurship show, but I've seen lots of successful people, more successful than entrepreneurs I know who are corporate executives, and doing great in those types of roles. So I'd love to understand from you, like, what's the personality type or the type of people that thrive as a founder,

and how can you tell if you're cut out for entrepreneurship? Uh, such a great question. I like the first point you made. There's way too much social pressure on trying to value being a founder over being part of a team, and then there's also way too much social pressure on trying to value being a founder over being part of a team. And then there's also way too much papering over all the bad parts that go into being a founder how hard it really is. And I won't be Debbie Downer here. It's just a fact. So setting that aside because I know you address that stuff, I do think the one common theme I have for successful founders is they refuse to accept things for the way they are.

They just refuse to believe that this is how it has to be, because this is how it's always done. They just always have a very strong view about how things could be done and how things should be done. That's number one. Two, they just always get back up again. They no matter what. I find, I talk about this in my book. Those without landage breakthroughs success that we can't even conceive, I do find a common

fact pattern in them in that they tend to absorb the winds. When there's a wind, it begins and enhances their self-esteem, their self-worth. And when they have a loss, all they do is expand the definition of what winning looks like. So in other words, like, oh, whether it's like, I mean, it's kind of good that that happened because as a result, I saw this and now I'm going to do it a different way. Actually comes across as borderline delusional. So I caveat that like, I'm not built that way. I actually scrutinize my losses very heavily and because I'm intellectually curious, I do absorb the losses a bit, not going to lie.

I'm in a malgum of losses and wins, but the most successful people manage to completely repel, reflect, you know, the losses. So big picture for anybody listening out there, you have to ask yourself, will you always get up again? Like, because that is the number one predictor of future success is past refusal to die. When I see a company that has like nine life and death moments, that company's not lucky. That's companies driven and led by somebody who refuses to die. So being an entrepreneur, I'm having literally right now three near death moments, like around me. Every day, all I do is wake up in a state of near death with something that I care about.

That is completely undermining any joy of some aspect of things that are working out. People are like, you have a book coming out, and then a great, I'm like, yeah, but, you know, that's what being an entrepreneur means. And it's a little bit like whack-a-mall. One moment, you're like, oh, thank God. And then so do you have what it takes to never give up? Do you have it what it takes to live in an unending state of putting your finger in the down and just prefer trying to prevent catastrophe? Because if you do, you'll probably be successful.

Ask yourself, have you been socialized by Instagram to believe that there's something better about being an entrepreneur than doing something else? Cause that's a lie, a complete lie. The world doesn't work without people who are part of teams and are willing to draft behind creators and help them execute. Yeah, I totally, totally agree. I feel like, like you said, it's like a personality type.

The person who's like, is unwilling to just give up. That's what an entrepreneur is. Because you always have to like pivot and kind of like burn the boats to your point and move on to the thing that you think you want to go for it, because you think it has to, it will have a better outcome, right? And just always switching gears. That's what I feel like entrepreneurship is. Yeah, Jeff, these has had a great quote.

And he goes, um, you have to be rigid in your conviction and flexible in your execution. So I think that's like the burning the boats has to be believing in the vision. When you're actually rigid in your execution, like you just said, that means you won't make all those little pivots along the way. No business resembles five years later, the original PowerPoint, mostly. If you're not willing to make those pivots, you never get to the five year later version of the PowerPoint. People who are very rigid in their execution are not successful entrepreneurs.

They're successful enablers of entrepreneurs. People are rigid in their vision are successful entrepreneurs. But people who have self-awareness will make the course corrections before they're imposed upon them. They don't need interventions from an external because they're intervening all the time with their brain and saying like, where am I going wrong?

They're intellectually curious about their own mistakes. So I would summarize saying that vision, that rigidity of the vision, the confidence, the willingness to never die, but the self-awareness to constantly reflect upon what's going wrong and the confidence and humility to acknowledge what's going wrong and make those course corrections before the universe imposes them upon you. It was so good, though. It recapped a lot of what we just talked about. And it's also making the decisions quickly, following your gut, not just like the data and the numbers, and following your intuition. So all right.

One last question will close this out. I know that you went through a lot of failure during the pandemic. And I would love to understand the types of failure you went through and how you overcame them and some lessons that we can learn in terms of overcoming failure. I would say that the number one most important thing, obviously failure was happening everywhere with the businesses and trying to stay afloat, but I actually think the pandemic period was less about failure and more about survival and triumph. If I'm being honest, when I recall the pandemic, I recall triumphs. And the central theme was predicting how things were going

to play out, not needing for them to play out in order to act on them. That's the most important variable in being successful in business, is the willingness to act on danger before you have pure evidence that the danger is going to materialize. Do you need to see the iceberg up the bow in order to be able to course correct or can you use feedback data intuition to say, let me course correct. And so when in the pandemic applying to that,

we had a paradigm across the portfolio and I would talk to our founders and say, every time I found we were acting on old assumptions, say, wait a second, is this the business we would build if we were building this business today? Maybe it's liberating that we can't open our stores anymore. We did that with Milk Bar with Christina Toci. It was like we were scrambling to reopen the stores and we're like, why are we scrambling to read? Who needs stores? What are stores? Why don't we just sell cookies, you know, on retail? And like, so I would say that to me that pandemic is an exercise in crisis decision making where you just simply say, how do I make the most of the situation? And what I like, what I take with me from the pandemic

is we shouldn't need a crisis to have a clarity of decision making. We should accept the fact that too many options is paralyzing and we should accept the fact that we can avoid disaster before it's upon us and that speed of decision making is more important than perfect information. So I look back at that a year and be like,

wow, that was actually pretty remarkable that every business I care about, nothing went under. I love that. Matt, this has been such a wonderful conversation. I always enjoy you coming on the show. You're somebody that I highly look up to. I recommend your book, Burn the Boats. Like I mentioned, one of my favorite reads so far this year. Thank you. I love coming on. I appreciate it. Such thoughtful, great questions. Got me old jazzed up for this week. Yeah, I can't wait. And I'm going to tell all my podcaster friends to make sure they interview you because you've got a lot to say. So again, thank you for coming on.

So we always close out the show asking two questions. The first one is, what is one actionable thing our young and profitors can do today to be more profiting tomorrow? Oh, wow, such a good question. I believe that everybody has inside them a leverageable asset. And that leverageable asset comes from a few different places.

A lot of times it comes because you sit in a stream of data of information. Everybody sits in a stream of data. I was on my TV show that I'm working on that helps business entrepreneurs buy a business for the first time. And I met this amazing woman from the Bronx and she had a bunch of Airbnb's.

She was like, and I was like, well, what's your business model? She's like, I focus on visiting nurses who are coming in from different places. And I said, well, why them? Because they can stay for 30 days, and they can pay a higher rate, because it's being subsidized. I was like, well, how'd you figure that out?

I was working as a clerk in a hotel, and I would overhear all the people checking in with visiting nurses. And I decided I was gonna go ahead and create an Airbnb business based on that. Wherever you are, whoever you are, just like that woman from the Bronx had a leverageable asset that came from a proprietary insight, something she can only see from sitting in the stream of data. You're sitting in a stream of data that could form the nucleus of your own

business or a new life or a promotion. So just ask yourself, what are the proprietary insights I have that could become a leverageable asset to change my life? That's so brilliant. Because you brought it up. Can you tell us about the new TV show at all? I can. I shot it. I shot it. It's basically I'll shorten this into 30 seconds. It's Shark Tank appeals to all the people who have like an invention or an idea and they want Mark Cuban or Kevin Larry right to check. We all love it. You had very few of us can actually relate to it because very few have an idea that they're going to seek venture funding.

So why do we love it? Because we all love the idea of being free of calling the shots of owning our own business. We fantasize about it. And so I wanted to create a show with Mark Burnett, creator of the voice and apprentice that teaches people the other 99%. What if I only have 75 grand? And I want to start a show with Mark Burnett, creator of the voice and a princess that teaches people, the other 99%. What if I only have 75 grand and I want to start a business? I'm by a business. How do you buy a business? How do you value a business? Oftentimes, it's usually a couple. And so what are the misperceptions about what it's going to be like to work together,

all these derailers that I call that get in the way? So that's the show where we shot it. So fun to do in Florida eight episodes and now we're looking to find it home. So we're originally going to be on the CNBC, but they went in another direction this year with their content. So we're finding a home. So by next time I come on, we'll be talking about the premiere of this show. That's so exciting. And you know, I've been hearing this as a trend that a lot more people are going to start buying businesses instead of creating new brand new businesses. So this is like right on trend.

Well, by the way, anybody listening out there, you really need to think about it because objects and motion tend to stay in motion. If you have an existing business and you could determine why it is at the seller selling, a lot of times as they're tired and they've been out of for 20 years. If a business crosses a certain threshold of duration, they're less likely to go under, whereas if you are in the cohort that just launches a business, you have like a 50% shot of being bankrupt in a few years. If you buy something that's already been around for over five years, you move into a different cohort. But people don't know how to buy a business. It's like a big mystery, and they certainly

don't know what to pay for it. And that's the purpose of the show. It's basically house hunters for business. Really cool concept. So I hope you find it home. And our last question that we ask every guest on Young and Profiting podcast is, what is your secret to profiting in life? I ask myself the same question every week, sometimes every day. What is the highest and best use of my time, energy, and resources today? So to break that down, there's a concept in zoning called highest and best use. It's a full out, so legal principle, which is every piece of land must be put into its highest

and best use in the current context. A warehouse in Tribeca in 1920, its highest and best use was a slaughterhouse. In 2020, it was for Leonardo DiCaprio's bachelor pad. Everything changes. You change every week based upon the accumulated experiences you've had in this life, and those accumulated experiences enable you to do something different. When I went on Shark Tank, just being on the show, opened up all sorts of doors, and it unlocked this dream that I had been harboring, but didn't feel like I could pull off, which is what if I could be a professor at the best business school in the world? How do I do that? And I spent a year of my life creating it. Because I asked that single question,

what is the highest and best use of my time, energy, and resources today now that I've been on charting? Everyone of you listening right now has done something different, harder, better today, this year than you did last year. If you're moving along in a progression, you need to audit what you're capable of now, what you have permission to do now.

Because otherwise, you find yourself you're on autopilot, you wake up in 10 years and you're like, this isn't the life I wanted and it's because you never asked that question with enough discipline to make sure you're constantly pushing yourself. I love that advice. I love being put on the spot with your questions because I'm like, all right, let me, those two things were the first thing that came to mind. So they must be very important. Exactly.

Like those questions are meant to be like, all right, what is this value that you have to share that you didn't get a chance to talk about? Because usually that piece of value is floating in your mind, right? So I like to get that out at the end. Yeah. Where can everybody learn more about you and everything that you do

and your new book, Burn the Boats? Okay, I have a website for the boat, burntheboatsbook.com. In terms of where I spend my time, it's largely on LinkedIn, because it's like a warm bath, everybody's civilized. You know, you could also find me on Instagram, mhiggins, mhiggins on, madhiggins on, on LinkedIn. But I tend to engage more on LinkedIn and I'm on Twitter for in small doses.

Yeah, you guys have like two of the biggest LinkedIn influencers on one call right now. So, I love it. Yes. By the way, don't sleep on LinkedIn, youngins. I know it's not interesting, but eat your vegetables. And LinkedIn, you can go viral and you can't go viral on Instagram. Take talk is great, but it'll probably be gone in a few years. So spend some energy on LinkedIn.

Yeah, couldn't agree. I've got a LinkedIn masterclass, if anybody's really curious about it. Take it. By the way, take it. That's the most value that you could provide is to take her masterclass because there's an alchemy to LinkedIn and there are certain hacks that change the outcome.

And if those out there would listen like I tried but my content didn't resonate, LinkedIn, especially social media generally, tactics or everything, strategy's less. Loing the tactics that make your content resonate will change the outcome. So take that class. 100% LinkedIn's algorithm is actually hackable. And I don't think any other algorithm is.

So 100% Matt always a pleasure. Thank you so much for coming on. I can't wait for you to come on again. Thank you so much. Bye everybody. Yeah, fam. I've had Matt Hagen's on the show two times. And he's always a favorite of mine. I loved learning the psychology behind why the same burn the boats mentality that worked in ancient wartime also works in modern life relationships and business. We've all sort of been pre-programmed to always have a plan B

and to hedge our risk. But like Matt says, hesitation kills more dreams and speed everwell. And when you hesitate, hedge, or divide your attention between your goal and the safety net you think you need to build, it all just begs the question, what are you waiting for? Research has shown that backup plans can actually hurt us on the road towards success. That abundant choices end up making us feel paralyzed. Your plan B that you think is giving you peace of mind is actually getting in the way of your plan A. Breakout success means boldly taking an opportunity before the tipping point of evidence. Making a decision in that space between intuition and data, it's following your gut. In fact, I saw this recent quote from Alex Ramozi who was a recent yap guest

and I'm just going to try to find it really quick. Opportunities only look like opportunities in the rear view mirror. Today, they look like risk. Totally reminded me of this episode. I hope this episode inspires you to burn your boats and to set a match to whatever corrosive plan be your cradling so you can collapse the time delay between insight and action and reap exponential returns. Thanks so much for tuning into today's Young and Profiting episode with Matt Higgins.

If you like this episode, the best way to tell everyone your favorite way to listen, learn, and profit is by dropping us a five star review on Apple Podcast. That's the number one way to thank us here at Younger Profiting Podcast. And share this podcast with your friends and family. Let's spread the word about Younger Profiting Podcast. You guys can find me on Instagram at YappwithHalla or LinkedIn by searching my name. It's Halataha.

And we're also on YouTube, so subscribe to our YouTube channel if you like to watch podcasts. Thanks so much to my Yap team for all their hard work behind the scenes. This is your podcast princess and the LinkedIn queen, Halataha, signing off. Are you looking for ways to be happier, healthier, more productive, and more creative? I'm Gretchen Ruben, the number one best-selling author of the Happiness Project. And every week, we share ideas and practical solutions on the Happier with Gretchen Ruben podcast. My co-host and happiness gu Guinea Pig is my sister Elizabeth Kraft. That's me, Elizabeth Kraft, a TV writer and producer in Hollywood. Join us as we explore fresh

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