What is up PartnerUp!
Today Jared and Isaac break down the chaos quotient. The fact is that some people can tolerate more disorganization than others. Jared and Isaac dive into the benefits of more organization and the strategic necessity of lack of organization. Jared and Isaac discuss who in their partnership leans higher on the “chaos toleration barometer” and how that’s affected the business they’ve built together.
Tune in to find out who was higher on the barometer and who ended up closer to the bottom in terms of coping with chaos and stress.
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Full transcript:
Jared Fuller 0:00
See how right what is up partner up? I'm back. Thank you so much to my partner in crime Isaac Morehouse for holding down the fort last week with Mr. Connor Jeffers from happily and at labs ebox of the HubSpot ecosystem.
Isaac Morehouse 0:19
HubSpot is just such an interesting example. Such a great example that I think everyone can learn from because they're not, they're not like, you know, you look at, you look at a Microsoft, and you can feel like, well, okay, yes, they have an ecosystem play. That's their big thing, but I can't really learn from them. If I'm a SAS startup, it's such a different world, but HubSpot kind of is like, a little bit of both, right? They're doing things that you can learn from if you're a sort of bigger Old World channel. And if you're like, small startup trying to get some agencies go, and it's just, I just find them to be such a continually fruitful and they keep they keep up with the trends, like they're still not, they're not the old dog that can't learn new tricks, at least not yet. Totally, it
Jared Fuller 0:58
was a great one, I always love whenever we can bring in, you know, a top partner from a space and you know, role models and mentors, right? Like, you know, how do you get to that top spot? is, that's what it's all about, right? Partner up is, you know, inspired by like, Hey, I'm gonna go partner up with the big dogs and to be a 37 person services firm and the top, you know, agency globally is no small feat. So we're gonna continue bringing you stuff like that. Speaking of mental models, role models, mentors, we're gonna get to some of that stuff today. But before I did, I had a very interesting conversation, Isaac earlier today, with Jake Stein, he's the CEO and founder of common paper. So you will probably have seen this in news on partner hacker.com. Come out. Bob Moore, the CEO of crossing, and actually emailed me introduction to Jake, who is his former co founder, like stitch data labs and RJ metrics. So Bob, emailed me was like, hey, my former co founder, CEO common paper, and they're actually launching an open source. Like totally, like, simple, like, locked down partnership agreement. And I was like, yeah, totally, of course. Thanks so much, Bob. So conference call with him. Phenomenal founder, just, you know, you have those combos, you're like, Gosh, this guy gets it, he totally gets it. And I won't get into like all the panda doc stuff, because contract management and blah, blah, that from my pass, but was so cool about that. I'm like, Absolutely, we're going to cover this. So we're going to drop it in news. I mail it to the PhD team, we're gonna drop it in the Ph. D. coverage. So that's my plug, folks. If you're not subject to the PhD, how the heck are you on this pod? Also, this is how you partner pill other people in your org. So forwarded out and get everyone to subscribe to partner hacker daily over at partner hacker.com. Well in
Isaac Morehouse 2:48
and you know, there's something that I forget, oftentimes, especially, you know, now there's a lot of partner teams are being downsized, but there still are a lot of people that are pretty new to partnerships all the time. And it's easy to kind of forget that and be like, Okay, everybody that's kind of a part of the orbit. You know, if you're listening to this podcast, you're probably already subscribed to the PhD, you probably already know about everything happening in this world. It's amazing how many people still don't how many people are still new to things. So when you run across those people, in fact, I just saw it today. I was telling you, Jared, I was in the red genius community. And I saw somebody say, Hey, everybody, I'm new to this whole partnerships thing. What's it all about? Where do I get started? In Azure, Matthew, shout out to Asher at partnership leaders. He had the first comment and he was like, go check out partnership leaders. Go check out partner hacker. And it's like, all thanks great, like, never heard of this stuff. And it's just a good reminder. So there are colleagues and friends of yours. And some of them may not even be in partnerships. But if they're at least partner curious about utilizing these strategies, send them that PhD baby, send them that PhD. Let's get that good stuff. Get that partner pill to hit every morning. So Jared, I want to ask you a question. What have you been learning lately?
Jared Fuller 3:56
Um, wow. So I feel like the year of partner hacker before a near bound became like, hey, Isaac, you know, you and I, we know with reveal, we can go create a movement. That is actually the next big industry and category that year, I think was a lot of you and I calling the shot, placing bets. And I would say there's four or five bets that we that we nailed that the 100 decisions we made in between were more or less irrelevant, right? So we kind of, I didn't say knew what we were doing. But let's be real, like we're, this isn't our first rodeo. And we were like, we knew we could do it otherwise we wouldn't have started it right. What has blown me away is over the last three months, I have learned more than I thought was even possible. I have learned so much over the last three months. So what have I learned, you know, inheriting near bounds, so to speak, or I mean, not inheriting but like taking it to the next level. That's the that's the phrase that's the thing I That's the thing, right? And then going, Whoa, shit, what the heck is it. And going through that learning process to like really codify and stand this up is like something that is as big as outbound as big as inbound. I've learned so much. I've loved getting into the weeds with CMOs and CROs. I've had more of those conversations than I've ever had. Since starting partner, hacker, and I think the thing that I've been learning the most Isaac is how to communicate as simply as possible. And using a much better economy of words, whenever persuading in gaining alignment and conviction and buy in to stop having petty arguments around how we fix what's broken with go to market right now. And I'm having conversations with people where they're picking those things up and going. My relationship with my CRO is changed my CMOS change, like, we do need to simplify. And I don't know, there's gonna be things that are top of mind for me,
Isaac Morehouse 6:05
how many times in life, I was just talking to some some team members about that. Some of the things that you know, really well, and you've learned the hard way, and you've implemented and maybe you've even preached to others, you get into a spot where you're like, why am I in this rut? Why am I struggling to move to the next level, and you also realize, Oh, I'm not applying this very simple lesson that I've already learned, like, 100 times, and I just keep forgetting, right? Like I keep having to come back to really, really common thing. And there's, there's a couple of those recently, but one of them, I've been thinking about, and Jared, you have helped me tremendously in this regard, since we started partner hacker together a year ago, and I've been working with you. People don't realize, because we're very similar. In some ways, we may sound similar when we're talking on the podcast, people don't realize just how different we are. And we're really at opposite ends of the extreme when it comes to the chaos quotient. This is gonna be a fun one. This is essentially the level of chaos that you are willing to tolerate or capable of thriving in. And what I've learned and to be reminded of is the chaos quotient. Yes, it should be less than 100. Like that's too much. But it has to be greater than zero, as well. And I am on the far opposite end, you have a very high, like your Chaos quotient is like fill me up. Maybe I can handle all the chaos, I can operate at 99. Yeah, you really can like higher than anybody I know. And I kind of forgot how low my tolerance is for chaos. I'm very, very like obsessed with task lists. And I'm zero inbox guy. I want all of my messages caught up, I respond to everyone within 24 hours, my task list, I'm just constantly working down it. And in certain contexts, that's great. But the bigger the stakes, and the bigger the swings that you're taking, I have learned I have got to increase my chaos quotient, I have to be comfortable with a higher level of chaos. And when you hear the word chaos in the work setting, most people think, Oh, your life is too chaotic. You're doing too much. But But I think for me, it's almost the opposite. If I'm doing too much, it's because I'm, I'm trying too hard to have to minimize chaos. Because I'm doing all these things to get rid of the mental chaos of having undone tasks. If I, for me, I have to get more comfortable with chaos. And that means doing fewer things, letting more things slip through the cracks, letting more fires burn without putting them out if they're if they're not that important. And just being like, okay, look, what are the handful of big things that really matter? And focus on those. And who cares if the other stuff is kind of going crazy and falling through the cracks? Like that has been something I have been relearning lately. And there's and it's hard because it's a point of pride for me to always be on top of my inbox and always reply to everyone and always be you know, never miss my dat deadlines or tasks. But like, if I'm nailing this stuff, that's a very little value. And I don't have time for and and it's basically a right, I'm not I'm not losing anything with anyone, I'm not burning any social capital because I'm checking the boxes. But as a result, I have no time to go create additional value to go take those big leaps to go move those big rocks. That's a big loss and you're on the opposite end of that spectrum. And I've really learned from you. It's like yeah, okay, 1000 fires are burning, there's a bunch of shit that I'm gonna get behind on. Oh, well, I'm going to come through and hit a homerun when it matters so so what
Jared Fuller 9:38
it's a very important I think topic right now to bring up in the context of your operating a business or whether your business partners like us and you know, other other interests. I think what people don't realize about startups I was mentioned, mentioned to You guys, before we got on that, I went back to like me, and I gotta go back to my roots a little bit because it's just been so chaotic. And I've been dropping balls left and right. And there's a bunch of things going on. But I'm working on some giant big swings, right? And also have been sick. So like, that's why I was out last week should have been like, oh, the fuller family got destroyed with strep and a whole bunch of other stuff. So chaos all around me total chaos. I've had a crazy year, the highest of highs and the lowest of lows, right simultaneously. And I'm like, I gotta go back to my roots on spending time with first principles, because I started to get mired a little bit and feeling like to go make a big bet to be like, Hey, I'm gonna go bet the farm on this, the amount of energy that you have to have for that thing, and conviction is like, this is some entrepreneurial stuff. I mean, this is like you are taking a risk. And if you give anything less than 100%, to that thing, where you are making a bet, the likelihood for every percentage point that you drop under 100%, that it happens, decreases disproportionately, right to that to that gap, that delta, right? So it's like I give 90% effort to that thing. Like you actually you've reduced your chances by a factor greater than that 10% Delta. And I think, if I think about every single thing. So I've mentioned, I was going back to my roots, Charlie Munger, for example, seeking wisdom. And talking about first principles like that some stuff that I want to bring back to the partnership world is that I'll there was a LinkedIn argument like we will tailor on the team, so shout out well, I'm about to eviscerate you. On the partner hacker team, he's he came up with this post and said, like, hey, the 8020 rule of partnerships is garbage. If 80% of your partners aren't performing, it's on you. And I'm like, hot, take sure whatever. But the reality is, let me give you a concrete example. One that does I heard yesterday that hit me in the face. So we're Charlie Munger, his business partner, Warren Buffett, he was reflecting on, you know, the last 55 years, 54 years of Berkshire Hathaway. And his direct quote was, I attribute my three point 4,000,000% return, right? Three point 4,000,000,000% Return to 12 decisions over 54 years. That is one decision every five years. Now, I'm not the smartest guy in the room. But I think those two men are pretty damn smart. And it you know, like, if I think about David cancel, and David Garr Harwood, seeking wisdom in their podcast, it's like, alright, it's like they were always trying to anchor back to first principles. And I think this is the chaos quotient, for example, in getting lost in the details, if you're way up here, and all of the details and you can't see the ground floor truth of like, where you're anchored, you're gonna have such a hard time navigating the things that matter to your business to yourself to your life. And there's another great resource thinking in bets, right? Like, you mean, this is probabilistic thinking, like, you need to be able to make those things happen. And yeah, man, I couldn't, I couldn't agree more on how important is to recognize where you're at in the chaos quotient. And I think that's why we make good partners too, is that we are on opposite ends of the spectrum.
Isaac Morehouse 13:30
And it's interesting too, because there's a curve along your career. early in your career, you don't have a lot to bring to the table in terms of the ability to make huge upside bets and take big swings, you just don't have the skill, the experience and network. So early in your career, you want to be at the lowest level of chaos, right? Like you're never dropping balls, you're never missing deadlines, you're hitting all the details, you're making sure you're never, no one is ever, like unable to get a hold of you. nailing those things, is such a great, easy way to make sure that you're creating value early on. But as you move up, and you move further, and you get more and more leadership, and you get more responsibility and experience, and you have more unique skills. If you're spending all your time just checking off those little boxes, you're actually losing out, you're not you're not paying enough attention, you know, people will make this joke and again, knowing my personality, I disagree with this joke. They'll say, you know, if you've never been late for a flight, you're not optimizing your time properly. Now, of course, we have Wi Fi in the airport. So it's a little less true. But the thinking was, if you're getting to the airport so early, that you've never been late before. It means that you're wasting too much time sitting in an airport where you could have been doing other higher value things. And there's something like if you're not, if you're not ever like missing a meeting or dropping a ball somewhere, maybe you're not taking big enough swings, there's actually something real to that when you get to that level in your career. You have to be willing to increase the level of things that level of chaos you're willing to to handle. It's funny, Jared, those big decisions, those big bets You know, there's a kind of, we're kind of going through one of those right now. And I don't want to be overly dramatic about it. But when we realized, you know what we've got here and the opportunity to really create this movement and to rally this, this categories or rally people around this category of new round, and we would work together down in St. Pete, it's like, man, there's just so much we can do when we're working together in the same place. And we can kind of get the team here, you can see moving boxes behind me here. So I'm moving my entire family, moving my entire family away from we've been on this 20 acre farm in rural Tennessee, it's been great, we've actually really loved this lifestyle, been remote for years loved working remote, but realizing, hey, if we have a chance to do this big thing, and if the odds of success increased by 234, or 5%, by us being together in person, that's worth it, to make this huge move, because a 234 5% increase in the probability of success on something that has the potential 400x outcome is actually a really big deal. So like, in Yeah, we're increasing the chaos in our personal lives moving when you have four kids, and oh, my gosh, we've moved so many times, we were like, We're never going to move again. It's it's crazy, it's chaos, a different state, a different everything are starting everything all over again. But to take that big swing, when you get that chance, it's like, these are those few decisions that will be defining decisions to me. And remembering that those are more important than just kind of making sure I've got like all the little peace and quiet on the on the details level.
Jared Fuller 16:32
This is such a fascinating thing for I think as we mature as individuals or as an as an industry in an ecosystem. Which by the way, Isaac Morehouse everybody that's as committed as you get to this movement. Right? He wasn't he wasn't native to this movement. Now he's moving down here, we're opening it up partner hacker studios near bounce studios. So like, shout out to the Morehouse family. This is going to be a blast. I can't wait to show you all what we have coming this this summer. Because it's going to be amazing to have habits in the same spot studio videos, all sorts of fun stuff. So lots of deeds to come on that. But what that reminds me of is like, why are people? Why do we tend to gravitate towards this? This pleasing mentality what I mean by pleasing mentality, it's that someone will come to you with an issue. And or something that's happening and your your response is either one of two things, it's apologetic or defensive. Right, like our default responses are apologetic or defensive. And there's actually another one, which is is much more important to develop, in my opinion, which is ambivalent ambivalent? Right. There's a, you know, where are we in wartime? Right now as it were in wartime? Right. So hard thing about hard things, by Ben Horowitz talks about this, you know, you know, peacetime CEO versus wartime to peacetime CEO, you know, let's, you know, let some of the details fall through the cracks, blah, blah, blah, like, lets people make their own independent decisions. And then wartime CEO, cares about cares about really nothing. But he cares about, you know, a gnat on a fly's ass, if it interferes with the prime directive. Right? So like developing this, like, for example, you're gonna get shit coming at you from a it's bad market. B, you're gonna come at you from leadership from people from a like this, pardon me this thing, whatever and you want to do what D defensive? Well, that's because you didn't do that. Or what how you want to react? Apologize, I'm so sorry. Let me go fix that for you. versus maybe ambivalent. It's like, it just is, you know, like that that was a cycle. It just is. And that way you have the mental capacity is defensive. Like we released different chemicals, whenever we're defensive, or were apologetic. And the way that people treat us around that, for example. You if you're ambivalent about some of that feedback, and not to say that you don't care, in aggregate, but I'll give you a perfect example. If someone's coming to you, and they're, they're trying to, let's say, advance, advance something around, you know, their initiative, it maybe involves partnerships. And you you hit a roadblock where let's say, You screwed up your program screwed up a partner screwed up, something bad happened. Defensive, apologetic or ambivalent, what you could do is turn it back around on them. It's like, look, my prime directives are 123. That's what I'm focused on. This happened. And I'll give you another simple example. You know, we've I think maybe he was told this story on here before. I think I can say it. Yeah, I think you'd say I think Pete Pete said it said as much as the story of pika puja and Brian Brian Halligan, where So he was the the founding kind of agency program guide, HubSpot, Halligan, the CEO, and he told me this story where him in the head of services were mired in all the details. Right? So like fighting over channel conflict, right? So like, hey, internal services versus this partner. And Pete built this entire big case in this like trying to point out, here's the 40. Wait, look at all these reasons that services are screwing this stuff up, serve up. No, Brian Halligan responded, it's the most gangster thing ever. He said, If you cannot figure this out, in fix it, I will find someone who can. Wow. Wow. See, see that you see what I'm talking about a little bit more now. If you can respond to these moments of this, where it's like, what was Brian thinking about? He's thinking about clearly something bigger, right? Like I'm here, I'm launching platform, I'm launching CRM, like we're taking, we're risking the entire company on becoming a CRM at that moment. And it's like, you have to figure this out. He's not
Isaac Morehouse 21:06
that worried about that. Because he's thinking about something bigger. I have found this in my life, I'm sure you have to certainly as an entrepreneur, but we're even just in family life, when something is really stressing you out. And it feels like super high stakes and super high risk. And the solution is usually to just do something that's an even bigger risk. And then, and then that other thing, suddenly, it just isn't a big deal. You're like, Yeah, whatever. That doesn't really matter that much. Because now in context. Yeah, I mean, we've all had this happen. If something horrible happens in your personal life, and somebody gets really sick or something like that, suddenly, all the things you were stressed about at work don't matter. Right, you just realize there's that perspective. And sometimes you can do that yourself by saying, maybe I'm stressed about all these little things at work, because I need to actually take a bigger risk and a bigger leap. Maybe I'm all worried about what copy is on this landing page, because I'm not doing something that's even bigger. You know, it's funny, you said, you use the phrase Prime Directive. This must be like a Star Trek day, we were on the partner partner marketing, your speed networking. And I made some joke about a bosoms whistle and senior shot from from at wine and cloud. He was like, yeah, that's like Star Trek. But But you said that and it made me think about responding. You call the ambivalently? I like to call it the Spock response. Have you ever watched the old Star Trek? If somebody comes into like, oh, my gosh, somebody just got sucked into a black hole. And you know, something horrible is happening. The humans will say something like, Oh, this is terrible. Or like, oh, whose fault is that? And Spock will usually say, interesting, or fascinating. And that response, where it's like, hey, this thing just broke, how come it's not working? And you immediately get that like fight or flight? You either want to defend yourself or be like, Oh, my gosh, I'm so sorry. But what if your first response was interesting, that creates this distance between you and the thing? And what if you could observe it like a scientist and be like, Hmm, something interesting is going on here. Maybe we should do something about it. Maybe we shouldn't. But can we learn something from it? Like, it's almost like it just like, puts a break in that pattern and let you recapture your rational mind for a minute.
Jared Fuller 23:06
Totally. I recall this one point, shout out to Trevor Rendell he was a was just an incredible engineering and architect AI. And people leader, like one of those rare talents that you see, I think he's over at noetic now leading the ENTJ team there. I remember coming to him back to back with a bunch of different things. And it was one of those moments where I was like, Ah, I'm dealing with a highly intelligent, capable leader. This is not just another engineer, where I was like, I think he said something to the effect of about something being a priority. And his response to me was Jared to you, everything is a priority. And I was like, Oh my God, that hurts so bad. He's like, when everything is a priority, nothing is a priority. And I was like, oh, okay, I'm just gonna walk away from this conversation. Pretend I didn't bring this up. Ouch. Right. And technically, I believe I was senior to him. Right now, he probably had a lot more respect than me in the org just because he's legit. I mean, that guy was so legit. I had a bigger title, but like, legitimately T Ron was the real deal. And I could have fought him on it. But you see the inverse of that, how you might be able to deflect something because clearly, T Ron, he had a bigger priority. He had a bigger rock that he needed to knock down. And I feel like a lot of where this comes from the defensive or the, you know, apologetic is it's, it's an old school book, I don't even know. We're just like throwing out like books and stuff. I'm gonna do an interlude real quick, Isaac, we were talking about this before the show. We're considering Isaac and I launching some sort of first principles podcast. So I'm going to make the call right now if you want us to, if you want us to launch one to where we do Isaac and me first principles that we pick apart like a first principles topic that can help you in all aspects of life. If you You want that? We're only going to do it if at least one person comments on LinkedIn tags, Isaac me and says you have to do the show.
Isaac Morehouse 25:07
And I'm gonna, I'm gonna throw them in there too. It'd be, it'd be really cool as well. You know, if we if we did something like that, to take questions, submissions that kind of help us kick off themes for for episodes, you know, that that people are like, hey, what have you guys talked about this? Or, Hey, this is something that I've, I've wondered about. I think that'd be really cool as well, to have a little bit of a, you know, see what's see what's on your minds out there. So yeah, good, good call Jared. We're not sure if we're gonna do this. We got so much on your plates. But if the people want it, who are we to say no, to the people?
Jared Fuller 25:42
I know, I know. And I think that for all of us, if more first principles thinking is needed in this current environment, where there's stress and chaos, you know, we started off with the chaos question. So the book I was bringing up is, it's called The Five Dysfunctions of a Team.
Isaac Morehouse 25:57
As my good friend TK Coleman would say, I have interacted with the ideas in the book, but I have not read it.
Jared Fuller 26:03
The thing that's kind of at the foundation of a lot of these problems is our willingness to risk. What I mean by our willingness to risk, and the number one thing is vulnerability. If you're like, What are you talking about? big bets, chaos, defensiveness, apologetic vulnerability, here's the point is, if you're scared about showing up and being like, look, I have made these strategic decisions, I have made the choice that these big things must happen. And I'm hanging my family life, my career, my company on these big things, the math means that other things are, by definition subservient to them. And that means that by making that choice, that some people are going to disagree with you, and they're gonna get mad at you, and they're gonna, they're, they're gonna be all up in your stuff. And then if you abandon those choices, it's typically because you're afraid of looking bad. And you're, and you don't have the conviction that these other choices are right. I think there's something about that vulnerability and the courage to risk and be who you are. And what I find is the people that I gravitate towards, and the people that I see that like, they are the Pareto Principle, they're the 20%. They're the, they're the ones that produce the the few, not the many, many is 10, steps backwards, 11 steps forward, but it's one at a time. So you're barely beating entropy, right. And if, if entropy is really high, right, inflation, like things are bad, you're actually behind, you're not actually advancing, because it's just one thing at a time, you actually have to like, make a leap, where it's like, oh, gosh, those 10 Other problems are now 10 steps behind me. And where this all comes from, is like, you have to be in a position where you can make those bigger shots. And if you can't, if you're not in that position, that's where first principles thinking can help you week over week, month, over month, quarter over quarter, to where you start to go, you know, I think this is a moment where I have to make a call. And I do have to risk. And I have to stake my something on that. And that might be a big Alliance, it might be a big deal might be a hard conversation. It might be, you know, whatever that thing is, how you make those choices is really everything to me that I'm discovering right now. So the chaos quotient, I'm willing to increase my chaos quotient, proportionally to the amount of conviction that I have in those big bets.
Isaac Morehouse 28:29
So here we go, we're gonna we're gonna get this nerd level nerd level turned up to 11. Here. There's an analogy to the structure of production in an economy, the way that how wealth is actually created. And you could call this your structure of personal production or professional production. You take what's called what economists call Crusoe economics, like Robinson Crusoe, some one person alone on an island. And it's kind of a great way to think about how wealth creation happens. And then you can add more complexity as you go. But you start there. And you learn what, like wealth creation comes from, you're on an island by yourself, and you just need to eat. So every day, you're just like gathering berries, and catching fish with your hand. And you got to work all day long, just to get enough to eat for that one day. And as long as you just keep worrying about eating for that one day, that's all you'll ever be able to do. But the way that you build wealth, is by investing in capital, you take the time to gather some vines and make a net that you can set out that will help you catch five times more fish. The problem is, how are you going to get the time to go make the net? If you've got to spend all day fishing just to eat for that day? Well, the way you'll do it is by sacrifice, you'll have to let the fishing slip for a couple of days to invest in the bigger play the bigger move. And so I think that's for your personal life for your career. You just want to make sure you Keep everything on schedule and nothing ever falls through the cracks and you're just making sure you're you're fishing for the day, you're checking off your boxes you're and fishing for the day for. For most of us, it's not about anything like physical substance, it's more about making people around you happy or like you, or making yourself feel like everything's under control. If you want to get ahead and not just maintain subsistence level at wherever you're at, you have to sacrifice that and go deeper in the structure of production and invest in some kind of capital, good, that's going to let you LeapFrog. Yeah, I don't eat for three days, I'm fasting for three days, I'm learning things fall through the cracks for whatever the equivalent of three days is your personal professional life, people are disappointed in me, because I'm missing things. Because I'm investing that energy in something that is going to help me leapfrog this process. Once I get that net built, I'll have fish, one day, I'll fish and I fish for five days. And now that frees me up to go to the next thing and invest in the next thing, right. And that's how you increase your quality of life. That's how you actually grow create wealth. And it's the same on the personal side there are, there are those things that you have to be willing to sacrifice in the near term to take a bigger swing, the desire
Jared Fuller 31:05
for us to try to figure out all of the details, like I posted this the the other day that you know the conspiracy, Charlie meme, it's like, you know, the guys behind him and he's got, I think It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, I've never watched the show, but like, it's so popular, like, you know, behind and you look at the 50 things behind me, right? Like the wires everywhere, you know, like a crime scene environment or like a murder mystery or something. It's look at this behind me. We get so lost in all of that detail, that we fail to realize that there are certain things that are more true than other things like not all ideas are equal. Not all tactics are equal. Not everything is equal. There is inherently a hierarchy to decision making. And like there's an innumerable number of paths forward. But there are different levels of probabilities for each thing. So for example, in your scenario, this is how basic fundamental first principle thinking and economics, philosophy, you know, meta ethics, whatever I'm, we're getting way too, like we're getting we're hyping ourselves up on launching this other podcast, by the way, folks, like we really are. What ends up happening is like, if you can use the robin Crusoe example. And you realize, well, actually, things will never change. It doesn't get more fundamental than that, right? Like, I am so busy, that I don't see a path forward. Like, okay, so how are things gonna get better next quarter, you're gonna have to drop some balls, you're gonna have to be vulnerable, you're gonna have to fail at some things and put them aside so that way you can succeed at others. And being able to increase your ability to go back and forth between I'm stuck like, I'm in the new place. Things are happening. Let me get some stability, right, let me get some stability so that way, everything doesn't fall apart. And then you're like, stuck. It's like, okay, now I'm not doing anything. Okay, got it. Get up again, get up again. And that's that's how growth happens. Right? Like, it's the perfect example for that, for your personal life. For your career for your company for everything,
Isaac Morehouse 33:18
though. So there's a there's a podcast, I'm sure you've listened to some of the journey. It's been several years, I listened to the first like season when it first came out or season or two, by Reed Hoffman from LinkedIn called masters of scale, really well produced entertaining podcast, and they had an episode about the early days of Pay Pal. And it was basically about this concept. Like, sometimes you just have to let a bunch of fires burn and not worry about putting them out. And he was like, in at some era in phase in pay pals history pretty early on. They were growing like crazy with this, like refer a friend $10 thing that they introduced. And so their growth was just insane. But guess what their customer service requests were like, off the chart. I mean, just
Jared Fuller 34:02
yeah, they they were garbage at it. They were so good. first person experience when I was building a web dev company, and I was trying to build payments online. And they were they were the worst a hated that
Isaac Morehouse 34:13
1000s and 1000s of unresponded to tickets just pouring in. And he was like, we had this choice. Like, oh, this is horrible. We got to do something about it. Okay, well, what resources are we going to use to do something about this with and basically, we realized we had a choice, either take care of all these customer service requests right away and stop growing. Or keep on this crazy growth rate. And just know that we'll put those fires out later, because like our growth is exceeding the rate of our growth is exceeding the rate of the backlog of customer service requests. Even though it's a horrible backlog and for any other company in any other phase of their growth. That would probably be a horrible idea. But it's counterintuitive as it is, especially if you're like someone who really takes pride in that kind of thing like quality of service and whatever. And again, every Every company has their own different situation. But that concept of like, we consciously made the choice to completely ignore customer service tickets for like, six months, just to like, hit the next level of growth. And when I heard that I was like, I don't know if I could do that. And part of it. Part of it is not a bad thing, right? It's part of my character that's like, Oh, my reputation, I want to make sure that people care. But part of it is it is a weird type of pride. Like, if you if you want to do great things, reputation, death has to be something you're willing to accept. You have to be willing to accept that some people, hopefully not your customers, but in this case, it was their customers, some people are gonna be really mad at you, and not like you and think you're an idiot. Think you're doing all the wrong things. You have to be willing to let your reputation die if you want to make that next step. And usually, if you stick with it and make it through, you'll, you'll come out better in the end. But I mean, you even see this with like celebrities, and I know this again, kind of like into like, you know, Peter Thiel, zero to one he talks a lot about this, these ideas from the philosopher Rene Girard about like, scapegoating and people being people being like, you know, turned into going from a hero to a villain in the public eye. But you'll see this with like celebrities, they go through a phase where if they want to, if they want to move to the next level, their career, all their fans are going to turn on them or the public is going to turn on them. And the ones who get really worried by that and try to prevent it. They end up stagnating, it usually backfires. The ones who I mean, this happened to Kobe Bryant, he went from beloved to hated by everyone. And finally, it was literally halftime during this specific game where he was playing terrible. And he in the locker room, he just decided I'm going to go from being a hero to being a villain. I don't care if people hate me. And he went out there and became, you know, the insane Mamba mentality, Kobe Bryant, that we all know. And guess what, eventually, it was like, everybody came around to liking him again. Now, I just share that it's like there's, there's a small microcosm of that I think in all of our lives, we come to these points where to get to that next step, you got to be willing to let some some fires burn and to let some people not like you or to be frustrated or disappointed or think that you should have done something differently. And like, you've got to be okay with that. It's better to be respected than to be liked.
Jared Fuller 37:11
Absolutely. It's better to be respected than light and Respect is earned. Here's what that here's what I mean, being liked is not, you don't get shit for being liked. Being liked is the most vanity metric in all of life. Right? We talked about SAS and vanity metrics, like everybody likes me, fuck that shit. Like, sorry, if if your approach is I'm going to be the appeaser of everybody. Okay, like no problem, but don't expect great things. Right? Like, you're not the struggle, and the hard choices in going up and down that kind of chain from first principles and recognizing, oh, I need to make a change. And it's gonna take hard things to get there. Right? Hard choices, easy life, easy choices, hard life, that's probably my favorite phrase of all time. I was. I've never do tattoos, his words on me, but like, that would probably be the one if I was gonna do it, there's words. Like, I just, I can't, I can't imagine being that person. Because you can never break from that vicious cycle of being, you know, being at the, at the beck and call of your family. And then you might need to make a familial change, or your friends or your co workers or your life, you're going to be stuck in a vicious feedback loop where you're not the person in charge. So I absolutely, absolutely, I could not, could not be that person. Yeah,
Isaac Morehouse 38:39
becoming, you know, becoming shackled to the good opinion of others. Sometimes it's even strangers in the online world, like, you know, well, I just want to make sure that everybody's nobody's disappointed or unhappy with me. And it's like, there's, there's something, you're gonna end up unhappy, you're gonna end up trapped in that. So, and this isn't like an all the time thing. By the way. It's not like be a jerk all the time. This is like, when those most big decisions come, there's gonna be sacrifice that has to be made to get to that next level. And that's, that's something you just gonna have to develop a level of comfort with.
Jared Fuller 39:10
And I think I think my, my summarization here of, because I've been thinking a lot about this just over the past couple of weeks, because I've learned so much, and it's been so busy. And I've had to ship a couple big things to like, get over, you know, some small humps, but we're like, you know, 2am 3am Nights, like, for weeks in a row, which I'm like, I'm getting too caught kids getting too old for this stuff, you know, but like, I had to make it like, had to make some big changes. Got through, left a lot of chaos in my week, which I tend to do chaos motion, you know, very high. And I'm like, okay, down. Now I'm working on stability again, like, what's the next big thing and wait a second. I just, I keep going through this. And I know I'll call it a moment. I don't know if you remember that Isaac at the beginning. Yeah, he's just smirking because I was talking Some crazy talk like totally like rambling to Isaac on a, you know our two person Slack channel they get a you know a 2000 word, you know learning out loud Slack message from me about how like this is going to be a partnerships moment blah blah blah and like here's all the here's my conviction as to why honing your ability to place those bets. That's the difference between your mom and pop world series of Hold'em. You know, mom and pop like poker night and World Series of Hold'em. They know when to place big bets. And going through life. I think if you can take one thing away from this one in the the chaos quotient, it's fine for you to not to have a low desire for chaos. But you should also try to find those people, you know, kind of both worlds directions and I need someone like Isaac so that way I don't destroy everything in the wake. It's like, Hey, I did the big thing in that look behind me and there's no one there. Look, go shoots. I've ruined everything until I got here. You know, like you got to do both to some degree, right? But if the people that I know that I'm just, I'm in love with how they operate. And I'm like, man, they are a role model to me. It's like every time they call a shot, they hit it. They hit it and that's like they've been honing this, of like, going through these motions. And it's like, you know, Berkshire Hathaway right 12 You know, his is like the biggest right? He's calling his shot very specifically. You know, like, most people probably don't know this about Warren Buffett, he reads six hours a day, six hours a day every day. Richest Man whether it's the people on the planet most successful he reads like he's he's constantly in taking like a min tat, shout out doing, which is do so many references. constantly reading ingesting information. So that way he knows whenever he's calling a shot that he has high high conviction. And that's a skilled for all of us to hone because maybe I'll leave with this. The rant if you're Randstad, Isaac, it's kind of like a benchmarking thing for like, compensation and a whole bunch of other things. There was this, there's this benchmarking report about executive compensation for soon to be public and public, you know, technology companies. And I looked at the definition between the P and C suite. And at the very top of like, all of these things, you know, like, hey, how do you compensate the senior director, director VP, blah, blah, blah, SVP, VP C suite? At the very top? The difference was this. The ability to destroy the company that literally meant that you should be paid the most. That's what that meant. And I'm like, Look, is this the type of person am I the type of person that can fundamentally alter the trajectory or take a terrible thing. So like, the better you get, the more opportunities you have, you have the opportunity to grow incredible, great things. And you also have the ability to screw things up. And being able to ride that line. It's like, those are the breakthrough people that change their companies change their careers. But man, I needed this on a Friday, Isaac, this was, this is fun. Here's my
Isaac Morehouse 43:12
here's my quick summarization is and I know, we wandered all over the place with a bunch of stuff as we went. But this chaos quotient idea, here's my sort of working hypothesis, everybody is somewhere on the scale. And wherever you are, is fine. There's nothing wrong with that. However, you have to be greater than zero, you have to be willing to tolerate greater than zero chaos, and you have to be less than 100. You can't tolerate 100. Or you'll know
Jared Fuller 43:34
you have to you have to quickly bring it down as quickly as you can if you're up at the top. Yeah,
Isaac Morehouse 43:38
exactly. And, and, and so like, that's first like, find where you are. And if you're a little too close to zero, maybe get more comfortable. If you're a little too close to 100, maybe get a little less comfortable, so much chaos. But here's the big thing. If you're going through a big change, if you're trying to make a big leap forward. If you are way on the high end to make that leap, the odds are good that you will have to reduce the level of chaos in your life to make that next leap. And if you're on the low end, the odds are very good. You're going to have to reduce I mean, increase the amount of chaos. In order to get there. To make those step changes. You usually have to adjust that barometer of what you're comfortable with.
Jared Fuller 44:13
Well, I thoroughly enjoyed this Isaac. So this was an off off cycle partner up. We didn't talk about partner up stuff. But these are hopefully more general first principles. I don't know maybe we'll launch something like this. shoot us a note on LinkedIn post something if you think that it's time to have a first principle show where we unpack some of the biggest wisdom that we can find and stuff like that. Who knows, maybe we'll do it. Maybe we won't. Isaac, this was a pleasure. Partner up folks. I hope you enjoyed it. Remember, if you haven't tried to partner hacker daily, go do it. Partner hacker.com smash that subscribe button. And if you're already subscribe afforded to some people on the team. This is just delightfully simple, daily MIDI PhD on partnerships. So 111 partner up peace out we will See you all next time
