BURN THE BOATS! Why Your Plan B is Your Worst Enemy | All The Hacks
00:00:00.000 | if I'm jumping from thing to thing and then I look behind me and I see a sea of unfinished
00:00:05.600 | projects and a lot of hurt people who are like, Matt, where'd you go? You were so into this,
00:00:10.240 | you know, a year ago that begins to chip away at my self-esteem, right? I'm not proud of my behavior.
00:00:16.320 | So I try to hold myself accountable to scaling and optimizing, right? Things get easier the third,
00:00:21.840 | fourth time you do it, right? So, but I don't think it matters how many plan A's you have.
00:00:26.400 | It's really about once it becomes a plan A, what is the, how do you increase the likelihood you
00:00:31.360 | will be successful? That's all my book is about. How do I put the odds in your favor? Once you've
00:00:35.920 | identified this thing as a plan A, not your only plan A, but a plan A, right? And the way you can
00:00:41.680 | have 17 plan A's, just zero plan B's. Hello, and welcome to another episode of All The Hacks,
00:00:47.600 | a show about upgrading your life, money, and travel. I'm Chris Hutchins, and I started this
00:00:52.160 | show almost two years ago because I love doing all the research to optimize every aspect of my life,
00:00:58.400 | and I wanted a way to share that journey with you. And after the first dozen or so videos,
00:01:02.640 | I knew this would be my full-time thing, but somehow it took me another year and a half
00:01:06.880 | until I was ready to go all in. So I'm glad I finally did it, but why did it take me so long
00:01:12.960 | to commit to something I knew deep down inside I was ready for? Well, that's exactly what we're
00:01:17.600 | going to talk about today, and I'm joined by the perfect person for the topic, Matt Higgins.
00:01:22.160 | Matt grew up in poverty and dropped out of high school at age 16 before going on to graduate from
00:01:27.440 | law school and then become the youngest press secretary in New York City history during 9/11,
00:01:32.560 | where he led the effort to rebuild the World Trade Center site before becoming executive
00:01:37.440 | vice president of the New York Jets and vice chairman of the Miami Dolphins. Matt was also
00:01:42.560 | a guest shark on Shark Tank. He teaches at Harvard Business School, and through the investment firm
00:01:47.360 | he co-founded, RSC Ventures, he's invested in some of America's most beloved brands.
00:01:52.640 | So what does all this have to do with me taking too long to go all in on all the hacks? Well,
00:01:56.880 | Matt just published an incredible book that I really wish I had a chance to read a year ago,
00:02:02.000 | where he shares his frameworks to stop hedging and unlock your full potential. It's called Burn
00:02:07.440 | the Boats. So today we're going to talk about why too many of us are driven by fear and why we wait
00:02:12.800 | for the perfect moment to act and why so often we subconsciously construct a safety net or plan B
00:02:19.520 | that actually holds us back. But we're not just going to talk about it. We're going to lay out
00:02:23.840 | an actionable playbook to overcome these hesitations and burn your boats, as Matt says.
00:02:28.640 | We'll also cover understanding your own motivations, overcoming fear, processing failure,
00:02:34.240 | managing crises, asking the right questions, and a lot more. So let's get into it.
00:02:39.040 | Matt, thanks for being here.
00:02:46.240 | Thanks for having me. I'm excited, Chris.
00:02:48.240 | It's funny. I read the front top cover of the book before I opened it, before I dug into it.
00:02:52.400 | It's like, you know, you can unleash your full potential, all this.
00:02:54.560 | There's a lot of books that cover topics like that, you know,
00:02:57.680 | Awaken the Giant Within, Tony Robbins, all this stuff. What's going to set this story apart?
00:03:02.400 | That's a great question. Well, big picture. I don't think there are new ideas in the universe.
00:03:08.560 | Mostly they've all been discovered, but there's new packaging. And when I read a lot of business
00:03:14.240 | books on the subject, not disparaging anyone in particular, I do feel like they're written like
00:03:19.280 | reference manuals, number one. And by the third chapter, you've basically got the crux of it,
00:03:25.280 | but then they're very repetitive. And that's not how people learn information.
00:03:29.600 | I'm a storyteller by heart. I was a journalist when I was a kid.
00:03:32.480 | I know how to explain, articulate package stories. And so I wanted to create a book that was very
00:03:38.880 | readable, that was a business book, but masked as a memoir, masked as a, you know, as a riveting
00:03:45.440 | historical fiction journey and sort of break the genre to some extent, with the goal being you
00:03:51.680 | could read it from beginning to end in one setting and be left with a feeling of infinite possibility.
00:03:57.440 | So packaging to me, I think is actually very important. Storytelling is very important.
00:04:02.160 | And I've accumulated a lot of wisdom through a lot of heartbreak and a lot of incredible
00:04:07.600 | opportunities and thought that I had something special to share.
00:04:10.640 | I think you're selling two parts of this short, having read most of this book,
00:04:15.200 | is that one, I think the idea of there being this plan B, that there are benefits from not having
00:04:23.280 | and getting rid of, I think is a little bit of a unique perspective I hadn't read before.
00:04:27.760 | And so we're going to get into that. And then I think the second, as you said, it's a business
00:04:33.440 | book. I'm curious if this really is just for people running businesses wanting to start a
00:04:38.800 | business because my perspective reading it was that it has a lot more broad applicability than
00:04:43.600 | just being for business people. Yeah, that's a good point. It doesn't
00:04:48.000 | quite know what it wants to be. But I would argue that business is just the tapestry or the canvas,
00:04:55.200 | rather, and that at the end of the day, it's really just about anybody, which is everybody
00:04:58.800 | looking to unleash their potential. Yeah. I mean, I heard you say this is for
00:05:03.040 | people who want to break out. They feel like the universe has a lot more in store for them,
00:05:06.880 | but they keep finding obstacles. So let's just jump in. What do you think some of those common
00:05:11.440 | obstacles are that kind of hold people back from pushing forward?
00:05:15.760 | What I try to do with this book and had in my head the entire time is show, don't tell. Like
00:05:20.800 | when I use that third person voice, Matthew, like you're at the center of the journey too much here.
00:05:26.480 | You want to show and illustrate rather than tell. And a lot of books, I think, just tend to lecture
00:05:30.480 | you. And therefore, it doesn't quite stick. So that's a way of saying the boat in my book
00:05:37.680 | historically is meant to be literally the escape route. That's how military strategists use it.
00:05:42.160 | Burn the boats is literally burning your escape route. In my case, the boat is meant to be a
00:05:46.160 | metaphor for all the things in our lives that hold us back when we're at the threshold of doing
00:05:52.400 | something great, something uncomfortable. And a lot of that has to do first with internal issues
00:05:58.320 | that aren't really discussed. Certainly, I feel like they're not discussed at my level enough.
00:06:02.720 | And that's imposter syndrome. In my case, it was shame. The metaphorical boat that I needed to
00:06:08.480 | burn first was the shame I carried around from the stigma of growing up in abject poverty and
00:06:14.480 | taking care of my mother, who died when I was 26, being a high school dropout, getting a GED.
00:06:20.720 | There was all this shame that I carried that I didn't realize until life brought me to my knees
00:06:26.240 | that even though I had achieved a pretty significant level of success at an early age,
00:06:31.120 | objectively, I hadn't really scratched the surface of my potential until a bunch of things happened
00:06:36.560 | in my life that brought me to my knees. And I began, I was stripped away, and we can get into
00:06:42.080 | this. And then I realized, "Oh, you haven't really done anything yet," right? Like any kind of self
00:06:47.200 | work. And so a lot of the issues that we need to do, the metaphorical boats for all of us are
00:06:52.560 | internal. How does someone who maybe hasn't even thought about what those things that are holding
00:06:57.600 | them back are even begin to identify them? Is there a process or questions you ask yourself
00:07:02.640 | to even start to understand that? Yeah. I think self-awareness is the
00:07:06.480 | greatest arbitrage in the universe. We're taught that we should go to Barnes & Noble and buy my
00:07:11.040 | book or go on YouTube, watch TED Talk. And no one ever emphasizes like, "Actually, the greatest
00:07:16.720 | upside in ROI you can have is self-awareness and reflecting what's going on inside you."
00:07:22.320 | So the first question, even when I'm doing a deal and I find that a founder, CEO, entrepreneurs
00:07:29.520 | help resistant, I try to identify, "What are you afraid of?" Like anyone out there listening,
00:07:35.840 | if you find it hard to assess your flaws or your failures and reflect, the question I always say
00:07:42.720 | is like, "What are you afraid of?" And the answers usually fall into these different buckets. And
00:07:46.640 | I'll just throw out a few. Usually it's stigma. It's some kind of judgment from a super authority,
00:07:55.600 | a parental figure or a spouse or a friend group that if I acknowledge some type of shortcoming
00:08:02.080 | or even an aspiration, "I want to be a musician. My dad's going to judge me." There is something
00:08:07.600 | that's getting in the way of somebody being reflective of their dreams or their flaws.
00:08:12.480 | And it's usually something that was prosthetically installed externally, long sentence. But in other
00:08:18.320 | words, it's not that nature put it in there. I think nature wires us to be reflective actually,
00:08:23.360 | because it's a way to protect ourselves. But nurture, your friend group, those parental
00:08:30.000 | figures, those people in your lives, over time they accumulate and they prevent you from wanting
00:08:34.560 | to look in. So the number one exercise I go through with anyone when I'm establishing that rapport,
00:08:39.040 | and we're trying to establish a relationship or do a deal, and I find that they under-index
00:08:43.360 | for self-awareness, I try to identify like, "What are they afraid to find out?"
00:08:47.680 | And so let's say someone goes through this process like, "Okay. One of the things for
00:08:51.040 | me I'll share is the first two jobs I had out of college, I didn't like. And so I was convinced
00:08:58.320 | for probably a decade that I couldn't be happy and make money. And so I was so afraid that I would
00:09:05.120 | either work a job I didn't like, or have no money, that this entire optimization and savings journey
00:09:10.960 | really began from, "I need to find every way I can to save as much money as possible so I don't
00:09:16.400 | have to rely on a job to be unhappy." And over a decade, as I managed to do that saving, I also
00:09:23.600 | managed to realize, "Oh, there are other jobs. There are other things you can do with your life
00:09:27.760 | that will make you happy." But it took me a lot of work trying to figure out, "Why do I think that I
00:09:33.200 | couldn't make money and be happy? What is it?" So it actually came to me, but it's not sure I knew
00:09:39.520 | what to do with it for years. So what does someone do if they identify the thing that is holding them
00:09:46.640 | back or the thing they're afraid of? And then what? I don't know. That's for them to figure out,
00:09:52.080 | Chris. No, I always say if I want to get a tattoo eventually, now I'm putting this out there in the
00:09:57.280 | world, but I can't find the words that are lasting enough to want to imprint on my body.
00:10:03.120 | But if I had to settle right now, it would be to face everything. If you just simply
00:10:08.880 | acknowledge the fact that if you face everything, including the thing you identified as the thing
00:10:13.600 | holding you back, that is where... So let me use myself as a case study. When I say that life
00:10:18.160 | brought me to my knees, I had had cancer when I was 32 years old. I had testicular cancer.
00:10:23.440 | And when I was diagnosed, I talk about this in the book, my first reaction was concealment.
00:10:31.920 | That once people find out that I have cancer, that I wasn't... When I was worried about
00:10:37.440 | losing my right testicle, that's like a tremendous trauma to go through in 24 hours, right?
00:10:41.920 | But I was actually more concerned about everybody around me was going to think I was weak.
00:10:46.560 | And now's the time they're finally going to take Matt out. I met my HR director on the corner of
00:10:52.160 | 57th Street because I didn't want anybody to see me in the office so I could change my paperwork,
00:10:57.200 | my beneficiary, should I die? And then two days later, I was like, how am I going to prove to
00:11:02.320 | everybody that I'm undefeated? And I was running the New York Jets business at the time, and there
00:11:06.000 | was a dinner with the coaches. And I decided to show up to that dinner and sit down. Everyone's
00:11:11.840 | looking at me. It's cringy. I have ice on my crotch. But I thought I was all tough. And I
00:11:17.840 | raised a glass and did a toast. I said, "Hey, I want to tell everyone what my new motto is."
00:11:21.600 | And I said, "It's half the balls, twice the man." And I said, "I just ordered dog tags,"
00:11:25.920 | which I still have to this day. I tell this story because in my 20s, that was like early 30s,
00:11:32.800 | "Wow, that's so tough. Look what you're telegraphing." It wasn't until later on when
00:11:37.200 | I got divorced and my whole identity crumbled as this young kid who was able to do everything
00:11:43.440 | earlier, succeed earlier, press, press, press. This was one thing I couldn't press through,
00:11:48.640 | and it was a public shame that I needed to own. That's how I saw it at the time.
00:11:52.080 | But then I started reappraising everything, saying, "Why did I go back to work two days later
00:11:58.400 | after I had cancer and was going to die? And why have I been behaving like the house is on fire?"
00:12:05.520 | And I realized it's like I never warned the death of my mother, and I never left that tiny
00:12:10.880 | apartment in Queens, living in that Roach Motel with no food, with eviction notices on the door,
00:12:17.920 | and Con Edison about to turn off the power, that I had never stopped living in that state
00:12:22.480 | of hypervigilance, despite the fact that I ran the New York Jets. And so what was I afraid to
00:12:28.000 | look at? I was afraid to look at the pain and suffering of that effort to try to save my mother.
00:12:34.160 | Once I had nothing left because my identity had been stripped and I had sort of gone into a
00:12:39.520 | depression to an extent, that was I able to realize my behavior, to look at it for what it was,
00:12:45.520 | and that changed the entire course of my career. So it's hard to say what you're specifically
00:12:50.080 | supposed to do, but I know what you're supposed to do is look within, and once you identify it,
00:12:54.400 | is to face it and hug it and embrace it, almost with excitement. When I realized your behavior
00:12:59.840 | makes no sense because you think you're being chased when you're no longer being chased,
00:13:04.080 | once I realized the boogeyman wasn't behind me, then everything started changing about my behavior.
00:13:08.800 | And are there things in your routine or your daily life that you now do differently because
00:13:14.480 | you're in this new state?
00:13:15.440 | I mean, so many things. Let's just start as a leader, right? I do believe that, back to that
00:13:22.400 | story I just told you about, I have the balls twice a man. Imagine you worked for me at that
00:13:26.320 | time, right? And you were dealing with something in your life and you needed some space to heal,
00:13:32.080 | to mourn, to recover, but you know the boss you have literally just had a surgery to remove a
00:13:37.520 | testicle on his back at the office. So that would tell you, telegraphed to everyone around you,
00:13:41.920 | that unless you are in a state as extreme as that, you better suck it up, right?
00:13:47.520 | So to answer your question, I have done a 180 and then I try to create an environment where
00:13:52.640 | people can surface the issues they're dealing with, because one, you make better decisions,
00:13:57.280 | and two, if people have space to be human, you get more out of them in the end. So that's one
00:14:03.120 | example. And in my relationships, I tend to very quickly create space to be vulnerable and share
00:14:08.800 | details that maybe can be a little shocking, right? But it's to open up the permission to do that.
00:14:14.240 | But in every area of my life, I am constantly trying to refine my ability to be self-aware
00:14:20.720 | and be unafraid about what I'm going to find. I'm constantly auditing my motives, like,
00:14:24.560 | why am I doing this? Even my own book, frankly, sometimes I say I wrote my book so I'd read my
00:14:28.640 | book, because I'm like, wait, now I'm not on brand. If I wrote it in a book, I got to like
00:14:34.720 | actually live to it or else it's kind of embarrassing. So my book is now my accountability
00:14:38.640 | partner. I read every day when I stray from it. Okay, so we've kind of talked about a little
00:14:44.000 | bit of what you need to do to evaluate yourself, understand what might be holding you back.
00:14:48.640 | If we look forward now, I know a lot of people who maybe they're not caught up in what's holding
00:14:55.200 | them back, but they don't know where to go. They know they are destined for something.
00:14:59.600 | But it's not that they're being held back, it's that they haven't figured out
00:15:03.440 | what's their motivation, what are they good at, what could they leverage in their life or their
00:15:07.600 | skills to start a company, do something at their current job, anything. I know you talk a lot about
00:15:15.920 | this in the book, but what do you think people should do to try to figure out where their path
00:15:20.720 | should go? I have this dialogue with students oftentimes at Harvard Business School. You would
00:15:25.040 | think top of the world, right? You've made it, you're at Harvard Business School, your life has
00:15:28.800 | been de-risked, you'll always have a six-figure job. And yet I find even at that level, people
00:15:35.680 | can sometimes be totally lost. And it's because they're asking themselves the wrong question.
00:15:40.560 | They're asking the question of, what do I want to do as opposed to who I want to be?
00:15:45.600 | So I go through this discovery exercise with everybody I meet. And I say, when you imagine
00:15:50.400 | yourself the happiest, are you a creator or are you an executor? You know what I mean? Are you
00:15:55.920 | the one who... When you imagine the environment that you thrive in, are you alone at a desk or
00:16:00.480 | are you in an office? Who do I want to be and how do I want to spend my time questions are way more
00:16:07.040 | important than what do I want to be. I want to be a lawyer. I want to be a... I actually think we
00:16:11.920 | should be spending way more time meditating about context, environment, the cues that tell you a
00:16:16.800 | little bit more about yourself. For example, in this exercise, it's in the book, I was talking
00:16:22.080 | to a student trying to figure out what they want to be. And then in the series of questions,
00:16:26.960 | she had said, "Actually, I want to be the one who enables a brilliant visionary, but I don't think
00:16:31.600 | I have it in me. So I want to be the one who uses my hard skills to make somebody's dream come true."
00:16:36.800 | And I said, "Okay, we can work with that. Well, what kind of context do you enjoy being in?"
00:16:41.360 | And she said, her name was Rachel. "Well, I love the beauty industry and I'd love to end up there."
00:16:46.560 | I said, "Oh, well, as luck would have it, I'm good friends with Bobby Brown." Bobby Brown,
00:16:50.880 | admittedly hates math. And she's about to launch this new company called Jones Road and finally
00:16:56.320 | go out on her own. And she needs somebody, a quant, to help her with that. And I picked up
00:17:00.880 | the phone, put it on the table. And I said, "If Bobby Brown answers right now, this is what's
00:17:04.400 | meant to be." She did. And fast forward, Rachel ended up working for Bobby Brown and launching
00:17:08.800 | her new brand. So I just say that as an illustration about what happens when you
00:17:13.120 | shift the questions to where do you want to work? What company? To who do you want to be?
00:17:17.840 | And I go through that in the book too, these kinds of questions that help you identify who
00:17:21.840 | you are as a person. I mentioned that some people might not know where they want to go.
00:17:25.920 | And you mentioned a couple things I could talk about. You have an exercise in the book that I
00:17:29.520 | think people should buy and take no matter where you are in your career. What about when someone
00:17:36.000 | has an idea of what they should do? And this is going to bring it back to the title of the book.
00:17:40.720 | But they're wavering. For me, I started this podcast. And when I did, I put one toe in the
00:17:48.480 | water and said, "Let's see if there's eight episodes. Let's run it for a year before I
00:17:53.200 | really jump into it." I think this is one of the biggest themes. You titled the book so obviously,
00:17:59.600 | it's one of the biggest things. But how do people really get the buy-in and commitment
00:18:04.960 | in themselves? And what's the research say about the way you plan and the impact it can have on
00:18:10.640 | the outcome? Yeah. I think when I meet someone or a business owner or founder who the business is
00:18:18.480 | either failing or in some respects, it's failing them emotionally because it no longer satisfies
00:18:25.680 | their soul. A few years in, when I do the postmortem about how did we get here? What I often
00:18:32.720 | find, it's because they refuse to ask the right questions at the beginning of the journey. And
00:18:38.160 | there's a few reasons why. When we have a great idea at three o'clock in the morning, most people
00:18:42.960 | are so excited that they've had something that stirred them, especially if they're in a bad
00:18:47.120 | situation, that they are then afraid to subject that idea to scrutiny. Because we also aren't
00:18:53.200 | taught to focus on opportunity costs, especially if we don't value ourselves enough. We don't want
00:18:57.520 | to talk about opportunity costs. We instead focus on how do I implement this idea? And I think that's
00:19:02.880 | how most people find themselves in a bad position. So I do the opposite. I totally focus when I have
00:19:09.600 | a big idea on opportunity cost. I try to project Matt Higgins three years from now and ask whether
00:19:15.840 | this idea is big enough, interesting enough, valuable enough to sustain me three years from
00:19:21.440 | now. That requires you to believe two fundamental things. One, if you're somebody who came up with
00:19:27.280 | a good idea, you can come up with an even better idea a week from now. It's a little bit like real
00:19:31.680 | estate. Brokers will always tell you there's always a better house coming on the market next
00:19:34.720 | week. The same is true with somebody who's an idea factory. So don't be afraid to rule out your own
00:19:41.200 | idea. And then two, I go through the exercise of opportunity cost. I try to imagine what could be
00:19:47.680 | better than this? What could be in three years from now and I'm out of this situation? And the
00:19:53.440 | reason why that's so important is most people make relative decisions to the situation they're in to
00:19:59.200 | escape it. Most big decisions we make, and you see this in personal relationships when somebody
00:20:04.560 | leaves somebody for another person, that rarely works out. And same thing with a job. If you leave
00:20:09.440 | a job for another job, if you take a job just to leave the last job, that usually will leave you
00:20:14.800 | unsatisfied too. So the reason why this opportunity cost decision matrix is so important because it
00:20:20.560 | will help you figure out, am I running from something or running to something? So I go
00:20:25.120 | through in the book this exercise around opportunity cost to pressure test our own ideas.
00:20:29.280 | And if you do that and you spend a couple of days or a week going through that exercise,
00:20:33.840 | you'll make a much better decision that's a sustainable decision.
00:20:37.200 | You mentioned the idea of just leaving a job for another job. So to go back to the,
00:20:40.800 | "This isn't just about running a business. This isn't just about being a founder."
00:20:44.160 | Ideas that came to my mind were deciding to quit your job to do something totally different.
00:20:50.000 | That isn't starting a company. Are there ways that you think people can process those big
00:20:56.960 | decisions and think about the things holding them back? So let's say we've identified, "Okay,
00:21:02.960 | I'm not just trying to escape this job I don't like. I've really found a thing I think I'm
00:21:08.160 | passionate about. I went through this myself over the course of 18 months with this podcast."
00:21:13.440 | But I think there are a lot of people out there who have the idea. And maybe they're not being
00:21:18.960 | pushed away as much as they are being pulled, but they're just scared or there's fear about
00:21:25.680 | going all in. So let's talk about going all in. Let's talk about burning the boat. Let's talk
00:21:30.480 | about why maybe going slow or having a plan B, it isn't actually helping you.
00:21:36.960 | Yeah. No, great. Terrific. No. So we have our idea. We've done our exercise. We've pressure
00:21:40.640 | tested opportunity costs. It's an idea worth pursuing. We're ready to go. And then we get
00:21:45.440 | stuck, right? And so what are the reasons people often get stuck? Obviously, one is fear.
00:21:51.040 | And so when people sometimes hear about the title of my book, "Burn the Boats," they presume I mean
00:21:56.800 | reckless abandon. But the book would be called, "Burn the Boats With You In It," and it's not.
00:22:02.320 | So I am one of the most paranoid risk takers you're ever going to meet. But how you synthesize
00:22:08.320 | risk and fear is everything when it comes to plan A. So what do I mean by that?
00:22:13.760 | That those who are able to fully commit to their own dreams and ambition have done the work to
00:22:20.160 | process the worst case scenario at the outset. So I'm always going through the following exercise
00:22:26.560 | when I have a big idea that I want to go all in on. And that is one, what's the worst possible
00:22:31.440 | thing that could happen if this does not work out? It's the first question I ask.
00:22:34.960 | What would I do if the worst thing that could possibly happen happened? How would I mitigate
00:22:40.400 | it? I have never asked myself that question and never had an answer to mitigate that is entirely
00:22:47.200 | within my control. And what I find is mostly the reasons are not practical. They have to do with
00:22:54.080 | judgment and fear of being judged or fear of being embarrassed. But to the extent to which I started
00:22:59.760 | a new job and it ended up being out of my depth, that was my plan A, you could always be like,
00:23:04.560 | "I'll just go back and get that other job." So we are already equipped because we're primal
00:23:10.480 | creatures. We are already equipped with the ability to defend ourselves when our plan A
00:23:15.040 | don't work out. But unless we pressure test that at the beginning, then the third question I ask,
00:23:19.520 | what's the probability that the worst case scenario will materialize? Usually the probability is
00:23:24.880 | actually very low because we could catastrophize and then you pressure test it. And then the fourth
00:23:29.520 | question I ask is, what would I be willing to do to have that plan A? What would I be willing to
00:23:35.600 | endure to end up having that work out? So in the case of Harvard, when I taught at Harvard Business
00:23:40.400 | School, which was very uncomfortable to me, I'd never been in a classroom before, but I wanted
00:23:44.720 | this so desperately, the idea that I had performed well at Harvard and had left these kids with
00:23:49.280 | something that was five times more valuable than their tuition, which was the objective I set.
00:23:53.680 | I was like, I would walk on glass to succeed. I would subject myself to endless ridicule,
00:24:01.200 | public scorn. I would come within an inch of my life to achieve. That's how much it mattered to
00:24:06.000 | me. And when I pressure test through those four questions, through that synthesizing risk,
00:24:10.560 | I was like, it's a no brainer to go on. So why does it matter? Why does that decision matter?
00:24:15.200 | Because when we are pursuing really hard things that take a long time, you're going to take
00:24:20.240 | incoming external and internal, the voice in your head, people around you that are going to make you
00:24:25.200 | want to turn back, right? And so if you haven't already processed risk, you don't remember,
00:24:30.720 | you know what I mean? And because you've done it at the beginning of the journey,
00:24:33.120 | like, wait a minute, I already asked myself how I would handle if this didn't work out and I'm
00:24:37.760 | okay with it. It's the memory that you went through that risk synthesis operation, exercise
00:24:42.800 | rather that sustains you. Let's talk about a little bit what plan B means. Sometimes people
00:24:47.520 | think plan B, plan B means risk mitigation, but I already said plan A incorporates risk mitigation.
00:24:54.160 | You've already gone through it. What plan B and what the science shows is plan B is not about
00:24:59.200 | de-risking anything. Plan B is a way for you to achieve your subordinate goal. So let's use it
00:25:04.400 | to anyone out there listening who wants to be a musician, but they have a crappy job that they
00:25:07.520 | hate. But you're like, you know what? My dad always said I shouldn't be a musician, but I
00:25:10.640 | don't care. I'm going to tell him to F him and I'm going to go ahead and I'm going to be a musician.
00:25:13.440 | I'm going to work really hard until I get on that band. However, if it doesn't work out,
00:25:18.240 | I do have a plan B. I'm going to go work at Bob's record store because I'm always perusing the aisles
00:25:22.000 | and he thinks I'm really smart. That's your subordinate goal, which is to get a job different
00:25:26.080 | than the one you have, right? In the music sector, but very different being a musician than working
00:25:30.960 | at Bob's record store. And what the study and the science shows is that plan B is actually an
00:25:37.520 | alternative way for you to relieve the pain and discomfort of pursuing your goals. So there are
00:25:43.040 | two ways to get that done. I can either win, succeed on plan A, or I can go for my lesser
00:25:47.360 | subordinate goal, which is going to leave me unhappy. And then the last piece of interesting
00:25:51.280 | research that came out of Wharton in 2014 was they found that just the mere contemplation of having a
00:25:57.280 | plan B Bob's record store is enough to ensure you will never be a musician. Just thinking about it
00:26:03.760 | and what they also found in the research, just having that insidious thought of working in that
00:26:08.000 | record store is going to dramatically reduce your desire to ever be a musician. So it's two things.
00:26:14.080 | You won't succeed and you won't care as much anymore. That was a lot to unpack, Chris.
00:26:18.320 | It's hard for some people, especially maybe someone like myself, where I'm like always
00:26:24.720 | thinking about all the outcomes, all the options to not have a plan B. But is having a plan B
00:26:30.960 | different than knowing that a plan B exists? There is. I love that you said that. That's
00:26:36.400 | such a smart way to put it. Having a plan B is very different than the peace of knowing a plan
00:26:42.000 | B is out there for you. And you don't need to return to it because you've already, at the
00:26:47.200 | beginning of the journey in pursuit of plan A, identified what it is. It does not need to be
00:26:52.560 | crystallized because you'll know you'll get a job somewhere, not Bob's particularly, you know
00:26:57.120 | what I mean? So it's a great way to put it. But if I'm having dinner with a friend and I'm like,
00:27:01.840 | I'm going all in, I'm becoming a musician and they're like, yeah, and if it doesn't work out,
00:27:05.840 | you know, you could you could just go work at Bob's Records. And it's like, oh, well,
00:27:09.360 | now that I know that's an option, you know, I assume it wouldn't be fair to say I can never
00:27:14.720 | become a musician again because I've now heard that there is a thing. It's more when you start
00:27:20.320 | to or is it more when you start to say, OK, yeah, that guy, he's right. I could just do this.
00:27:27.520 | That's going to be fine. I'm trying to think, how do you as an optimizer thinking through all
00:27:32.640 | the options still make sure you aren't putting your your primary goal at risk by just thinking
00:27:39.120 | about them? Well, it's a great question. It's a study showed when you did introduce the idea
00:27:44.240 | of thinking about. I think the difference is all about sequencing. If you had that dinner
00:27:49.760 | with your buddy who is a little skeptical, like, hey, Chris, you're kind of delusional.
00:27:53.840 | You sort of suck to your guitar playing isn't any good. Unlikely. Right. If you had yet to
00:27:58.720 | do what I said at the beginning of this conversation and have that that risk synthesis
00:28:02.720 | process. Right. That would have been the first time that somebody was now intruding into your
00:28:06.880 | thoughts. So like and then you get defensive, like, well, I can always go work at Bob's. Right.
00:28:10.960 | But if you had already done the beginning, like you're not even hearing it, like it does not
00:28:14.480 | matter. You're fearless and you're impervious because you already are self-contained. Right.
00:28:19.520 | I know what I'm going to do. Can I curse on this podcast, Chris? I already know what I'm going to
00:28:23.520 | do. So like I like and I don't care what you say. You know what I mean? It's not registering. But
00:28:28.800 | if you hadn't already done that work on plan A, if it wasn't part of your plan A, you would you
00:28:33.360 | would be susceptible to it. So this can sound like semantics, but I'm 100 percent convinced it's not
00:28:38.080 | semantics because the research shows it. But you ask a great question is how to delineate between
00:28:42.560 | having already once thought through it versus having it at the table while you're going after
00:28:47.600 | plan A. All I can say to you is I'll give it to you in a practical setting. There's some stuff I put
00:28:53.280 | in this book that I can't read that I cringe at. It's so deeply personal. And I was a couple of
00:28:58.800 | weeks before it got published. I was going for a walk and I was having a low serotonin moment.
00:29:03.520 | And it repeated on me like, why did I put that in the book? Why did I put that in the book?
00:29:10.000 | Should I go change it? And then I was like, wait a second. We already went through this,
00:29:13.760 | Matt. At the beginning of the journey, you put it in the book because you're pretty sure
00:29:17.360 | somebody out there who's reading it right now is depressed and hopeless and they're going to read
00:29:21.520 | between the lines of what you wrote in that sentence and it may change the trajectory of
00:29:25.760 | their life. You've already made the decision. That's the difference, right? You know what I
00:29:30.000 | mean? And then I've already gone through. All right. So it gets published and amplified in
00:29:33.680 | ways that I didn't really intend. I'll live with it. But the benefit of helping somebody out there
00:29:38.000 | read that sentence is worth it. So again, nuance, but not semantics. And when I think about this
00:29:43.840 | idea of "Okay, go all in on this thing. You can be impervious to the feedback that maybe it won't
00:29:48.560 | work because you've committed. You've metaphorically burnt your boat." Does that necessarily mean you
00:29:54.160 | have to commit to the full goal all at once? And I'll give a concrete example that we talked about
00:30:00.480 | for two minutes before we got started. I have this vision and this is the first time I think
00:30:05.600 | I'm sharing it on the podcast. So it's kind of fun. There's AARP. This thing that everyone knows,
00:30:14.240 | "Oh, my parents are retired. They joined this organization and they have all these great
00:30:17.840 | things. And they've created a community of reasons that you would join a membership program
00:30:22.800 | for something." I don't see something like that for the millennial who likes experiences.
00:30:30.160 | They're not going to join AARP, though I have in the past said you can for deals.
00:30:34.720 | Like even as a not old person retired, you could join. But I thought, "Oh, what if I start
00:30:38.960 | something that could be a valuable membership that I hope people get value out of related to all the
00:30:45.360 | hacks?" So it's an idea I have. I haven't gone all in on it yet. I haven't even said I'm going to do
00:30:50.320 | it until right now. But do I need to commit to this is going to be a massive thing to effectively
00:30:58.000 | burn the boat? Or could I say, "Hey, I'm thinking of starting this. Now I've at least created some
00:31:02.560 | public accountability." Or maybe I create it. And I say, "Here's where you can sign up."
00:31:07.280 | I haven't built it all out to everything everyone might want. Maybe only a handful of you listening
00:31:11.440 | want to join with a few parts aspects of it. How much do you have to commit to your grand vision
00:31:18.640 | to have burnt your boat? Well, I would argue that everything you just said is not your plan A yet.
00:31:24.240 | Right? Because you're still in the formation phase. So I think we get to define when it
00:31:28.480 | becomes a plan A. It's about crossing the threshold of saying, "I am going to do everything
00:31:33.600 | I can to manifest this." And you and the language you've used are not there yet.
00:31:38.640 | So I would say that we all get to... And it's all about our personal comfort level with risk and
00:31:44.080 | commitment and where it ranks with your other priorities. So we are allowed to play and toy.
00:31:48.880 | In the book, I talk about this. I go pretty far down the road before I decide whether this is
00:31:53.920 | the thing. And I don't mind having goals that are in parallel and sometimes in conflict. Right?
00:31:58.320 | I became a lawyer who goes to law school, gets an offer from Skadden Arps. And then I'm like,
00:32:03.680 | "No, I don't want to be a lawyer." And then I never even took the bar exam.
00:32:06.480 | So plan A and burning the boats is not about dogmatic, rigid, forcing yourself to fully
00:32:13.360 | commit to everything that comes into your head. But when you've decided, Chris, that you're doing
00:32:18.400 | this membership program, which by the way, is a great idea. And I'll sign up right now without
00:32:22.480 | even knowing a single benefit because the way you hack everything feels valuable to me. This
00:32:26.400 | conversation is already fun. So I'm all in already. Hopefully that escalates your commitment.
00:32:31.600 | But it is not your plan A yet. And so it doesn't matter.
00:32:36.960 | I mean, I've already decided. I've burnt the boat. I'm all in on all the hacks, right? It's
00:32:41.840 | my full-time thing. I left my company, job, everything. This is it. Do you actually need to
00:32:49.280 | burn the boats on all the small projects in your life and commit to a plan A? Or is it really more
00:32:55.200 | a higher order thing for one or two projects in your life, your professional career,
00:33:01.600 | your relationships? How do I think about it on that spectrum?
00:33:05.440 | That's great. I actually don't render an opinion on the number of plan A's we can have
00:33:09.360 | because I think the joy of living, at least as I've identified it, is in the perpetual pursuit
00:33:15.840 | of these growth opportunities that stretch me, that make me uncomfortable. And they tend to be
00:33:20.800 | operating simultaneously. What I do do, though, is I try to consolidate my gains. Because if I'm
00:33:27.840 | jumping from thing to thing, and then I look behind me and I see a sea of unfinished projects
00:33:33.520 | and a lot of hurt people who were like, "Matt, where'd you go? You were so into this a year ago."
00:33:39.280 | That begins to chip away at my self-esteem, right? I'm not proud of my behavior. So I try to hold
00:33:44.720 | myself accountable to scaling and optimizing, right? Things get easier the third, fourth time
00:33:49.600 | you do it, right? But I don't think it matters how many plan A's you have. It's really about
00:33:54.320 | once it becomes a plan A, how do you increase the likelihood you will be successful? That's all my
00:34:00.080 | book is about. How do I put the odds in your favor once you've identified this thing as a plan A?
00:34:04.720 | Not your only plan A, but a plan A, right? And the way you can have 17 plan A's, just zero plan B's.
00:34:11.280 | I'm having this conversation in my head of whether the mere existence of multiple plan
00:34:18.000 | A's is plan B's, but I feel like- No, but I gave you the framework before,
00:34:23.200 | which is a fun question. A plan B is by definition a way to achieve the subordinate
00:34:30.320 | goal of plan A. So that's how it becomes a plan B. That's why The Musician and Bob's Record Store
00:34:35.520 | is a perfect way because both give him a new job, right? But they're very different. So as long as
00:34:40.160 | you're 17 or your membership club, your podcast, right? Those are not planned. They're very hard
00:34:46.480 | things that require total, utter commitment. Yep. Yeah. For me, I think I try to have a few
00:34:52.960 | number of things because I just personally can't manage lots of projects at once, which goes back
00:34:59.120 | to something you said in the book. You talk about how to figure out what you're good at and accept
00:35:03.280 | that you're not good at everything. It took me a lot of time to process this. And I'll shout out
00:35:09.440 | my time at Wealthfront. As a product manager, I realized there are parts of being a product
00:35:14.640 | manager that I'm just not good at. And I realized that not as early, but early enough.
00:35:20.960 | And I think it's hard for people. So I'm curious if you have any tactics for people
00:35:25.760 | to realize it and accept it? Because I think it's so easy to assume that if you're good
00:35:32.960 | at something, you can be good at everything. And it's very hard to be self-critical.
00:35:37.200 | But I guess both, how can you find it? And maybe what are some things you could say to
00:35:42.800 | encourage people that learning the things you're not good at is actually a valuable thing to learn?
00:35:47.680 | Yeah, well, so great questions. I mean, there's a concept in land use and zoning
00:35:54.800 | that relates to property. And it's to ensure that property is always put to its best use
00:36:01.440 | based on the current context. So it's called highest and best use. To make that less abstract,
00:36:06.800 | a warehouse in Tribeca in 1920, the highest and best use of that warehouse was as a slaughterhouse.
00:36:13.040 | In 2020, Taylor Swift is hanging out there with her private elevator. The property changes.
00:36:20.080 | I look at myself like a piece of property that is always changing due to its context,
00:36:25.120 | except the context is not external, it's internal. I am an amalgam of all the things I've accomplished
00:36:30.800 | prior to today. "Oh, well, now I'm a guy who was on Shark Tank. I know how to do TV.
00:36:36.000 | Now I'm a person who teaches at Harvard Business School. I know how to teach. Now I wrote a book.
00:36:39.840 | Now I'm an author. I have things to say." I ask myself every single week, sometimes every day,
00:36:46.480 | what is the highest and best use of Matt Higgins now that he has accomplished whatever it is he
00:36:52.000 | did yesterday, whatever it is I've now achieved through my trauma? Part of the highest and best
00:36:56.400 | use of me now is to share painful things that some people don't talk about, because that's very
00:37:02.560 | valuable. By focusing on the affirmative and asking yourself, "Anybody listening right now,
00:37:08.080 | what's the highest and best use of you?" rather than be a negative of saying, you begin to
00:37:12.720 | cull the herd of opportunity and say, "Well, I could do Excel, but I'm not that good at it.
00:37:19.440 | By the way, why do I want to be?" and say, "I'm a good communicator. I can synthesize complicated
00:37:26.160 | information. I could operate a company, but it's not the highest and best use of Matt Higgins is
00:37:31.040 | to operate a company with 200 people, even though I've done it before." I don't know why people are
00:37:35.440 | afraid of this. Why do you want to be good at everything? Don't you want to be great at a few
00:37:39.920 | things? Besides, if you ask the question I just gave you, the answer will lead you to where you
00:37:45.680 | should be spending your energy. You don't have to make a value judgment. There's no value in the
00:37:49.760 | statement I just gave about the highest and best use. It just is true. Anyway, that's my number
00:37:54.880 | one piece of advice. It sounds like, "Stop reframing what am I not good at and just focus
00:37:59.600 | on what you're great at." Yeah. Now, as I say this, and you bring up a great point,
00:38:05.120 | I find it's one of the hardest things for founders to accept is those limitations because they don't
00:38:12.000 | know what it means to be a CEO. When you're a founder, you suddenly go from an idea creator
00:38:16.960 | to an implementer to a capital convener. Then all of a sudden, you run an operating business.
00:38:23.600 | You believe that being a good CEO, good founder is having the capacity to run an operating business
00:38:29.920 | and do everything. They don't realize that actually being a good founder, good CEO,
00:38:34.320 | is the ability to identify talent that's better than you at each position and to render yourself
00:38:39.040 | obsolete wherever you possibly can. But I find a lot of people struggle with this from an identity
00:38:43.840 | standpoint. They feel like they need to be good at it only because no one gave them an alternative
00:38:48.480 | definition. Or even in the non-founder CEO world, I find that people often think that there's a
00:38:56.240 | prescribed path. You do a job, you do it well, and then you manage people doing it.
00:39:00.400 | I have met countless people that have realized that the best use of their time is not managing
00:39:06.880 | other people. And other people, similarly, are phenomenal at it, even if they aren't a master of
00:39:13.440 | the skill of their industry or whatever the people that they manage do. So if you're a designer,
00:39:18.240 | you might not be the best designer in the world, but you could actually be the best design manager.
00:39:22.240 | I find a lot of people feel, for whatever reason, they want to be branded like an operator. They're
00:39:27.520 | insecure about not being an operator, which fundamentally, being an operator and managing
00:39:31.280 | people is being a very good therapist. And a lot of people don't have the patience or the EQ to be
00:39:35.120 | a therapist. And so therefore, you're probably not going to be a very good operator, right?
00:39:38.400 | Because it requires so much time and patience to get the most out of people. But I find that
00:39:42.720 | scenario a lot. People just get insecure about not being an operator, an executor.
00:39:46.880 | Yeah. I find that so many people think that management is the next step. And I'm excited
00:39:53.680 | when I hear stories of people that realize that that wasn't the case and what they did.
00:39:57.360 | And Google was one of the few companies that created an alternative track for someone to
00:40:04.400 | just be very senior, very highly compensated, but not be a manager. And I see that trend picking up,
00:40:10.560 | at least at a lot of companies in Silicon Valley. And I hope that continues to permeate itself
00:40:16.320 | through all industries. But...
00:40:18.000 | No, it's a great point because it's possible to separate influence and authority from command
00:40:23.520 | control responsibility. And it makes sense because most people are very bad managers.
00:40:28.960 | So it makes sense that not everybody was born to be a manager.
00:40:31.440 | Yeah. And so while we're on the topic of things that we might not be good at, let's put that
00:40:35.440 | aside. But let's talk about when things don't go right. When you do fail, are there things that
00:40:40.880 | people should be doing? Because look, once you've committed to a plan A, you've burned the boats,
00:40:44.080 | you're on the way, you're not going to not... It's inevitable that things will go wrong along the way.
00:40:48.800 | How do you... We talked about the fear to get started, the fear to commit. But what about the
00:40:54.400 | challenges that come along the way, processing those failures? You want to be a musician,
00:40:59.440 | you do your first... You decide to go all in, you do your first gig, no one shows up,
00:41:03.520 | it's a disaster. How would you advise someone to process that failure and continue pushing forward,
00:41:10.160 | or maybe understand when they shouldn't? Yeah, that's a big reason why I wrote this book,
00:41:16.160 | because I have seen throughout my life, the same fact pattern play over and over and over again,
00:41:21.280 | which I don't quite understand why the universe is wired this way. But the act of persistence
00:41:29.040 | is a tremendous predictor of future success, right? The mere act of persisting and surviving
00:41:34.800 | another day will ultimately beget success, which doesn't make any sense, right? What do you mean,
00:41:41.760 | I just stay around another day, I just push through and then eventually I get what I want?
00:41:45.360 | But the answer is, it's true. And so I talk in the book about the most successful people I've seen
00:41:50.640 | would break through success. If I try to discern, what's the common fact pattern here? Come from all
00:41:55.680 | sorts of different fields, different walks of life. And the common fact pattern I see is when
00:42:00.080 | they face a setback, they simply expand the definition of what success looks like to accommodate
00:42:06.960 | that particular setback. It sounds almost delusional. It's like, I'm so glad that that
00:42:10.960 | didn't work out because I never would have hired Bill. And now that Bill's here, I'm going to make
00:42:14.400 | a billion dollars. And yet when they have a win, it enhances their self-esteem. So what's the point
00:42:22.160 | of saying that? It's very important how we process failure. One, accept the fact that the goal is to
00:42:27.200 | continue, is to survive. So how do I survive? How do I keep going? And the number one thing you need
00:42:33.760 | to do to survive is to preserve your sense of self-worth. It's something we don't focus on,
00:42:39.280 | but your number one objective when you have a setback is to ensure that that particular failure
00:42:43.840 | does not become enmeshed with your permanent identity. So number one, my process is, I
00:42:48.800 | acknowledge that I failed. So I remain intellectually honest. Also by acknowledging it
00:42:52.560 | verbally and otherwise, it loses its power over you. The fear of even acknowledging it is the
00:42:57.360 | thing that kind of is half the battle and being able to be like, yeah, I failed, whatever. But
00:43:01.760 | then number two, I am not a failure. I just refuse to be identified. And that's the point I made
00:43:06.800 | about these outrageously successful people. It's like, it just does not penetrate their reality
00:43:12.080 | distortion field. So number two, I'm not a failure. Three, but what is a failure trying to teach me?
00:43:17.680 | How do I extract maximum value from this failure? Back to my point about survival and persistence,
00:43:23.200 | in the failure is the answers to your future persistence, your survival, and you have to
00:43:28.560 | mine it and sit with it for a bit. And then the fourth piece is to never look at it again.
00:43:33.120 | You know, once you've extracted value and I'm not great at that. And again, I wrote my book,
00:43:38.160 | so I'd read my book. So anybody here saying, wow, that's great, but I can't do it. Understand that
00:43:42.240 | I struggle with this too, but I know it's true. So while I struggle with it, I remind myself,
00:43:47.280 | that is the way to do, but those four simple, easy steps and then go forward.
00:43:51.840 | Back to our point about the musician, like, when should he give up? You know, the answer is like,
00:43:57.520 | never. It's just like, find a different way, right? Like find a different way to be in the band.
00:44:02.320 | Maybe you're not the lead guitarist, but you're in the damn band. You know what I mean? And just
00:44:05.600 | like, never, never stop. It doesn't mean never iterate, never course correct. That's like,
00:44:09.360 | you're, you know, you have to do those things, but just never stop. And that's why it's so
00:44:15.040 | important to have this plan A construct and to accept the idea of the way you're going to get
00:44:18.800 | what you want is to not have the plan B and to have processed the risk at the beginning of the
00:44:23.200 | journey, because the way to be ultimately successful in life is to never give up.
00:44:28.400 | I know it sounds so corny and it's in all the books. It's like, but there's a reason there
00:44:32.080 | are cliches, right? Because they're true. They tend to be true. You know, you just don't stop.
00:44:36.560 | What's funny, I have a specific anecdote from researching podcasting, which is
00:44:40.720 | someone always asks, like, how do you be a top podcast? And I was like, well,
00:44:44.320 | I have one piece of advice. That's very easy. There are 4 million podcasts.
00:44:48.240 | And if you filter the 4 million down by podcasts that have done more than 10 episodes ever
00:44:54.960 | and have published in the last 10 days, you delete 96% of podcasts. So it's like,
00:45:01.920 | if you want to be in the top 5% of all podcasts that have been created, not the top 5% that are
00:45:06.720 | active, but of all, you literally just have to produce 10 episodes and keep going. And that's it.
00:45:13.760 | We don't want to accept that for some reason. I don't know why. I mean, because it's really hard
00:45:17.680 | even. And there are moments like I'm going through something right now. You know,
00:45:21.600 | there's always moments when I think that can't possibly be true. It can't be that if I just stay
00:45:27.760 | the course and continue to make course corrections and refinements that ultimately I'm going to get
00:45:31.120 | what I want. No matter what, despite everything I'm saying right now, it gets bleak for me.
00:45:36.880 | And I cannot believe that that statement is true. And yet I just forced myself to believe it. And
00:45:42.560 | in the end, it is always true. It's just, I don't know how it's going to play out.
00:45:45.840 | Right. Like there's a, there's even my book, you know, when you open my book, anybody out there
00:45:49.520 | who reads it, they'll tell you just a funny story. I did a huge SPAC or $200 million SPAC during a
00:45:55.440 | pandemic. And I like, I knew that the industry would probably turn, but I thought I could do
00:46:00.480 | a great deal and I could get it done. And I would learn public markets and, you know, maybe I could
00:46:04.960 | outrun the timing and I could just show how it could be done better. Right. Long story short.
00:46:09.280 | So that was the opening of my book. And in doing my SPAC, I had to will every part of this to
00:46:14.560 | existence, including the IPO. I IPO at the height of COVID and it almost fell apart. And I had to
00:46:20.720 | just stay up all night and to get it done. I didn't feel good, but I just kept working through
00:46:25.520 | it. I rang the bell the next day. Right. And then by within two days, I had double pneumonia. Right.
00:46:31.440 | And my similar, the oxygen was dropping. I'm like, wow, like now I may die because I did this,
00:46:36.960 | you know, but I got it done. And then I got a deal done and on and on and on. And then
00:46:40.800 | ultimately the market turned and the SPAC fell apart. That was the beginning of my book. Right.
00:46:44.960 | Okay. I'm going to have to acknowledge a little failure in the beginning,
00:46:48.400 | but the good thing is I have my TV show. I have a Shark Tank spinoff. I'm going to open the book
00:46:52.480 | about my Shark Tank spinoff and tell everybody how I'm partnering with Mark Burnett. I'm leveling up.
00:46:56.720 | It's the whole premise of my book. I'm going to get that done. So I write that and then the TV
00:47:02.400 | show gets canceled before it ever airs. So my editor is like, I think we got to rewrite the
00:47:08.080 | beginning of the book. And I'm like, no, I think that's the point of the book. Like that this is
00:47:12.720 | how it goes. And you know what, when we look back, if I did a podcast with you three years from now,
00:47:17.760 | I guarantee you, there's going to be exponential value somehow that came from me knowing how to
00:47:22.240 | bring a company public and to my, my TV experience is going to result in the next iteration of Shark
00:47:27.840 | Tank that I created. Or you know what I mean? Like it's just the way the universe works,
00:47:31.840 | but when you're in the middle of it and it's bleak, sometimes it all doesn't make sense,
00:47:35.840 | which is why you need the faith. But if you just burn the boats, it's going to play out in your
00:47:39.520 | favor. And how do you go up against this as what you said, a paranoid risk taker? You know, you're
00:47:45.760 | you're seeing all these things fall apart. You know, sorry about that. But like, yeah, thanks.
00:47:51.520 | Well, I'm just trying to practice what I preach and model what it looks like.
00:47:54.720 | How does being a paranoid risk taker play into all of this?
00:47:59.920 | I spent a lot of time agonizing of whether I should or should not do this back. All the things
00:48:03.600 | could play out exactly what played out was on the list. You know what I mean? And so I was able to
00:48:08.720 | go all in on Plan A. Plan A is not a delusional belief that you're going to get what you're
00:48:13.200 | entitled to, right? Or it's, it's, it's, it's the, it's the utter commitment to the, to the goal.
00:48:18.400 | The only way that that SPAC had any shot of becoming an IPO or getting a deal done is if
00:48:24.880 | I had fully committed to it. If I had an ounce of Plan B as I was going, I wouldn't have gotten as
00:48:28.800 | far as I would have gotten. And the same thing with the, with the TV show, it wouldn't even
00:48:33.520 | gotten remotely close. So as a paranoid risk taker, it's especially important for me to have
00:48:38.960 | processed all the risk at the beginning of the journey, because then I would have these intrusive
00:48:42.880 | thoughts that never would have enabled me to get it done. So I think they're, they're not at all
00:48:47.360 | mutually exclusive. It's actually more important for a risk adverse person to do what I'm saying
00:48:51.760 | and to go through that exercise and process everything. Because when I was taking on water
00:48:55.520 | through both of those, you know, experiences, I kept remembering, like, you've gone through this,
00:49:00.160 | you knew this could happen, you know, attack, like keep going forward and, and, and don't be afraid.
00:49:05.520 | You already know you have the tools necessary to handle whatever, whatever happens.
00:49:09.040 | Earlier in the conversation, you talked about goal setting. You've just walked through some
00:49:12.400 | big projects you worked on. Is there a framework you use to set goals in your
00:49:17.280 | personal or professional life? Yes. I think if you're going to commit
00:49:20.880 | to a life of perpetual pursuit of bigger and bigger opportunities, and you're going to put
00:49:24.800 | yourself in an uncomfortable positions, you could find yourself drowning or overwhelmed or,
00:49:31.600 | you know, have taken on way too much. So I make sure I always say, this also helps me with
00:49:38.080 | processing risk and going all in on plan A. I believe it's important to identify what can I not
00:49:44.640 | live without, right? If I lost everything, you know, what, what do I absolutely need to maintain
00:49:50.800 | in order to have a degree of peace and happiness. And as you become more successful, your relationship
00:49:56.880 | with risk actually increases because you have more to lose. You get more afraid to take bigger
00:50:02.400 | swings. I find this with colleagues all the time, like, well, now I have the big job and the big
00:50:06.400 | salary. Now I'm even more afraid to, to, to take on risk. And so I think it's actually very important
00:50:12.400 | to define your needs as narrowly as possible, the more successful you become, and then try to
00:50:18.240 | let that base case not change. So I draw a hard line of boundaries around my kids. My spouse is
00:50:25.120 | my best friend. You know, a few basic things that I need. We're always saying like, what's the
00:50:29.360 | smallest apartment we could live in? So I'm not afraid of everything going to crap. And so that's
00:50:33.840 | how I, I set objectives. And when I feel like I've taken on a lot, that something may fail,
00:50:38.880 | then I'm always like, well, it doesn't matter because I know what I need, you know, if
00:50:42.560 | everything were to go to hell. And I think people don't do that. People don't ask like, what's the
00:50:46.000 | minimum? They focus more on what they want, not what could they live with if they don't get what
00:50:50.720 | they want or what they have is taken away from them. You've had experiences in your life that
00:50:54.800 | have dealt with all kinds of crises from the biggest stage to lots of business operational
00:51:00.400 | things. Maybe talk a little bit about your experience dealing with big crises and how
00:51:05.920 | you manage that both internally and externally. Yeah, I, for those who don't know, I was the
00:51:12.880 | press secretary to the mayor of New York on September 11th, 2001. And then I went and helped
00:51:19.840 | oversee the rebuilding of the World Trade Center as chief operating officer. So I spent two years
00:51:25.120 | at ground zero from the moment that first plane struck the tower. And so, you know, the most
00:51:30.640 | extraordinary complicated and gut-wrenching crisis maybe in American history. And my first takeaway
00:51:37.680 | that I learned from that experience was how showing up is half of everything and how people
00:51:44.320 | get that wrong. They get the wrong in every context, right? CEOs, leaders, you flail.
00:51:48.720 | That most people are looking for just symbolically and actually for you to show up and identify that
00:51:56.320 | you're here, that you're in charge. So whatever situation I find myself in, even in a personal
00:52:01.120 | crisis, I say, am I showing up? And showing up personally means am I facing the thing
00:52:06.640 | that is the crisis, right? Back to my earlier statement, if I had one tattoo, it would be face
00:52:10.720 | everything. So showing up is number one. Number two, is it back to, you know, what's the worst
00:52:18.320 | possible thing that could happen in this crisis and how would I deal with it if it played out,
00:52:22.800 | right? And what's the likelihood of that playing out? I ask myself those same questions when I'm
00:52:26.560 | in a crisis. And then three, I look for the silver lining very early, right? This law of physics that
00:52:33.200 | every action has an equal and opposite reaction is very much on display in a crisis, right? No
00:52:39.520 | matter what happens in this world, when there is a crisis and something bad happens, a portal is
00:52:44.160 | going to open up to a parallel universe where something good is happening as a result. Sometimes
00:52:48.160 | when that involves pain and suffering, it's very hard to accept and you have to just wait for that
00:52:51.760 | to materialize. But when life or death is not on the line, you should give yourself permission to
00:52:56.720 | say, okay, I just lost my job, which is a big crisis, but with what's the parent, what's the
00:53:02.800 | portal that just opened up to a parallel universe? Oh, well, I have nothing to lose. Now I'm willing
00:53:07.200 | to go all in on being that musician by plan a right now, I don't have to settle anymore for
00:53:10.960 | Bob's record store. And so I do think again, not in life or death situations, but every time I have
00:53:16.560 | a crisis, I get excited by what's the portal. You know what I mean? Where am I going? What's going
00:53:21.280 | to happen in my life as a result of what just happened. And I think if people can change their
00:53:24.800 | relationship, and there's another way to say it, Rahm Emanuel said at Mayor of Chicago, never let
00:53:28.800 | a crisis go to waste, but it's another way of saying what I'm saying. But I do talk in the book
00:53:33.200 | too about one of the interesting things when you look about a crisis and sometimes you assess how
00:53:37.680 | you performed and if you admire how you performed, often the reason is, is because you had clarity
00:53:42.720 | of decision-making and you act decisively because you had few choices. A lot of my book is about how
00:53:47.440 | do you migrate the benefits of crisis decision-making in times of peace, right? So that
00:53:52.960 | no one wants to have cortisol flowing through their stomach in order to behave effectively,
00:53:57.520 | but there is something to be said for the clarity of crisis decision-making and applying it to
00:54:01.600 | everyday life. So that's a good question. It brings up a good question. If someone's trying,
00:54:05.760 | let's take someone who's at a job, they don't love it, they're trying to figure out what to do next.
00:54:08.800 | Do you think the average person is spending too much time trying to make that decision or too
00:54:13.440 | little? I think the average person is spending too much time looking to settle to escape the pain
00:54:22.080 | of the current situation and not enough time believing that the right situation is out there
00:54:28.560 | and confidently pursuing it. I think the same is true of relationships too. We want to relieve the
00:54:34.240 | pain of the status quo and therefore we settle and not enough time trying to identify what's
00:54:39.680 | the right situation. So we tend to repeat the same bad patterns, I believe. Most people fall
00:54:43.840 | into that trap and that's because you don't value yourself enough. You either believe the right
00:54:47.840 | situation isn't out there or you believe you don't deserve it, especially true in personal
00:54:51.840 | relationships. You just don't know or you don't think you're worthy. Well, on the professional
00:54:56.480 | side, I feel quite amped right now. I'm like, I already did the plan A, went all in on the macro
00:55:04.240 | idea of what I'm building here, but I'm ready to start. Well, I'm excited. Look, you already got
00:55:08.480 | your first customer right here and it was effortless and your acquisition cost was zero.
00:55:12.480 | Well, just to be clear, I have had two listeners or readers use this feature on the newsletter on
00:55:19.360 | Substack that says, "I'm going to commit to spend." I think both of them said, "I'll pay $100 a year
00:55:24.960 | for a membership. You just have to build it." So technically, Matt, unfortunately, you are
00:55:28.000 | customer three. Huge shout out to customers one and two. Chris, I have news for you. I'm willing
00:55:34.080 | to pay $400 for the premium membership. Oh, okay.
00:55:38.240 | I am technically still the first premium member, as I have upsold myself.
00:55:42.400 | Tier two. Okay. Well...
00:55:45.200 | See, this is what happens when we commit to plan A publicly on a podcast.
00:55:48.400 | I know. So I'm excited to do that. In fact, I guess I should probably commit myself to this
00:55:53.360 | even further and say, if you go to allthehacks.com/join, I'm going to put up a page where
00:56:04.480 | anyone listening can join a membership that I will create. And the one thing that I will
00:56:09.600 | commit to having in it now --there's not a lot of features-- is I'm going to do a once a month
00:56:12.960 | call just for members. Zoom call. You can join. Ask anything. We can talk about anything.
00:56:19.200 | I'm not going to record it. I'm not going to put it out to everyone.
00:56:22.240 | We'll at least do that. And the goal in the long run is to build a real membership to have
00:56:26.720 | perks and benefits. I have some crazy ideas on travel. I'll talk about them in that first Zoom
00:56:32.000 | call. But if you go to that page, I will set something up by the time this airs.
00:56:35.920 | Can we use this as a case study, though? Because one thing we didn't get into is something I talk
00:56:39.920 | into my book about the loneliness of being on the bleeding edge and what happens when you have a
00:56:44.960 | revelation or an epiphany like you've had with this membership idea, which I think is fantastic.
00:56:49.440 | But let's say I was neutral. What happens is there's the relationship between the magnitude
00:56:54.880 | of an opportunity and the amount of data there is to support it is inverse, which makes sense.
00:57:00.400 | If you have a really great idea and that you only you see, because you're so early,
00:57:05.760 | there's not going to be any data out there to support it. And two, if you rely on your friend
00:57:11.440 | group or family group or whatever to validate it, they're not going to be able to see what you see
00:57:15.920 | because it's your epiphany. And at the same time, those are actually confirmatory that it's a big
00:57:21.840 | opportunity, unless you're crazy or delusional, that because only you are putting the pieces
00:57:26.640 | together. And I think what happens is oftentimes where people sit where you sit, wait a second,
00:57:30.720 | why is there only AARP? There should be a membership group. What is it about being 65
00:57:34.800 | that makes you want to belong? That's not true. I would love a group where I get benefits, right?
00:57:39.040 | What happens a lot of times, Chris, is now a person will road test it with their peer group
00:57:44.400 | or their friend group. And if they surrounded themselves with people who maybe don't have,
00:57:50.480 | who are risk adverse, or maybe they don't have their best interest at heart, the idea dies
00:57:55.120 | with those groups. So I talk in my book a lot about, make sure that when you have a nascent
00:57:59.040 | idea that you one, cradle it, but two, consult agendalist supporters or what I call pragmatic
00:58:04.080 | optimists, people who are wired to be optimistic, but pragmatic, so they can give you real data.
00:58:09.040 | But it's really important to sit with this idea that when you have a big opportunity, a big idea,
00:58:13.600 | there isn't going to be the data or the affirmation to support it in the early days,
00:58:20.560 | and don't let it die at that point. Because the best innovations in life are gut sandwiches.
00:58:24.960 | They began with intuition, like you just had a little bit of data, AARP, the thing exists.
00:58:30.000 | But you're going to launch this based on intuition and my early membership fee of $400.
00:58:34.720 | Love it. So if anyone listening right now has a thing, whether it's a new career path, a new job,
00:58:40.720 | anything, my strong recommendation is to check out the book. And maybe you can burn your own boat,
00:58:46.640 | like I just did on this episode. We're all in on a membership, and we'll see where it goes.
00:58:52.320 | Where can people find anything about what you're working on? I know you've got some
00:58:56.560 | cool bonuses on the book online. Where should people go?
00:58:59.360 | Yeah, I have a website, burntheboatsbook.com. I tend to spend a lot of time on LinkedIn. So
00:59:05.840 | find me there. I love to hear their feedback. So if you read the book, I'd love to hear from you.
00:59:11.280 | Feedback is amazing. So Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Goodreads, wherever it is you spend your time,
00:59:16.320 | that would be great. Also tells me which themes I should be building upon and expanding upon.
00:59:20.080 | So thank you.
00:59:20.880 | Yeah. So leave a review for the book, just like I always ask everyone to leave a review for the
00:59:24.240 | podcast. I know it's really important. I will go leave you a review after this.
00:59:28.160 | Only if you liked it.
00:59:29.440 | You wouldn't be here if I didn't. So...
00:59:31.120 | Okay. Excellent. Thank you.
00:59:32.160 | This has been awesome. Thank you so much for coming. Definitely everybody check out the book.
00:59:37.440 | I really enjoyed it. And thanks for being here.