If you've ever felt the pulse-pounding blend of fear and excitement that comes with leading a venture, this episode will strike a chord. We'll dissect the contrasting emotional states of triumph and trepidation, taking cues from Ben Horowitz’s "The Hard Thing About Hard Things." Entrepreneurs often walk a tightrope, balancing intense pressure with the drive to succeed, and we're here to share how that manifests in the ever-escalating challenges and responsibilities of the business world.
Leadership is more than a title; it's a lifeline for your team. That's the core of our conversation as we analyze how a leader's steady hand is essential in navigating through both smooth and choppy business waters. Dave Nirchi brings his wealth of experience to the table, shining a light on the importance of consistency, trust, and confidence in leadership. We discuss the pitfalls of unpredictability and underscore the power of humility and intelligence in guiding ambitious teams. Join us for a candid talk that not only seeks to understand the complexities of leadership but also aims to equip you with the wisdom to lead effectively, no matter the circumstances.
If you've ever felt the pulse-pounding blend of fear and excitement that comes with leading a venture, this episode will strike a chord. We'll dissect the contrasting emotional states of triumph and trepidation, taking cues from Ben Horowitz’s "The Hard Thing About Hard Things." Entrepreneurs often walk a tightrope, balancing intense pressure with the drive to succeed, and we're here to share how that manifests in the ever-escalating challenges and responsibilities of the business world.
Leadership is more than a title; it's a lifeline for your team. That's the core of our conversation as we analyze how a leader's steady hand is essential in navigating through both smooth and choppy business waters. Dave Nirchi brings his wealth of experience to the table, shining a light on the importance of consistency, trust, and confidence in leadership. We discuss the pitfalls of unpredictability and underscore the power of humility and intelligence in guiding ambitious teams. Join us for a candid talk that not only seeks to understand the complexities of leadership but also aims to equip you with the wisdom to lead effectively, no matter the circumstances.
📖 To access Travis' complete book list, visit his storehere
Speaker 1:
This is Unleashing Leadership, and I'm your host, travis Moss, and I am with our season five special guest, dave Nurchi, as we get after the lessons learned from the book the Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz, and we've got a point selected for today that we're going to get into from our pick list about euphoria and terror, and that is brought to you today by the One Big Thing podcast, because you are not alone. We need to learn how to reframe our challenges and overcome the things that are holding us back. You can get more information on that podcast by going to nqrmediacom and there's all kinds of ways that you can listen to that. If you're an Apple subscriber Spotify, wherever you want to hear that. It's going to be there, you're going to find it there. So, dave, getting right into our point, euphoria and terror I'm thinking back to the book and where Ben made this point. He was talking about basically the roller coaster that an entrepreneur is going to be on, and he's talking a lot as an entrepreneur, like a full fledged, like he is one of the very, very small minority of entrepreneurs who actually are incredibly successful, more fail than ever actually do anything Right, and so he is now sharing basically the reality of doing something big and not just big, but building it from zero and having to get people to buy into it and the two poles, I guess, of emotions.
Speaker 1:
It's almost like when you're, when you're in that level you're bipolar a little bit you go from holy shit, the world is falling apart tomorrow to oh my gosh, we're on top of the mountain. Nobody can get us right. We are the greatest in the world and you, literally it's like it's like a blizzard in July. It just comes from nowhere. You're on top of the mountain and all of a sudden there's an earthquake and the mountain splits in half and you're falling. And you're just falling, and falling, and falling and you have this. It's terror. I don't know what's. I have no idea what's going to happen. These are the initial feelings. I have no idea what's going to happen. These are the initial feelings. So when something really bad goes on and you're thinking, okay, this could cost, I'm looking at, let's say, our business. We're looking at 30 people and 30 families, 30 mortgage payments or rents due, 30 grocery bills, 30 retirements at stake and you're thinking I screw this up. I screw up all of that and everything that that means and everything that matters to them. And then, as the business gets bigger, you have community, you have investors, you have, you know, all these other people that are going to be impacted by whether or not you screw up.
Speaker 1:
The first thing that happens when the shit hits the fan is that feeling of terror. Like you know, it's almost like something's coming after you. It's like you know the story of, you know, the man-eating lion in Africa. You know you're sleeping in a tent, you're hoping the lion doesn't come get you in the middle of the night. And then, once that hits you, you realize, okay, I got no choice, I'm in it. Right, I'm already knee-deep in this. I got to do something. So then it's like I got to work my way through it. And then, when you work your way through it and stuff explodes off the backend because you put all that work in and now things are going really well, all of a sudden it's like, yeah, look what I can do, and I'm crushing it, and we're crushing it and we can do anything, and then the cycle starts all over again. And that's what it is. It's an absolute cycle.
Speaker 1:
Every plateau you get to, then you go okay, I'm going to climb to the next plateau and you know the the cliff is just as steep.
Speaker 1:
You know it's just it's you're getting higher and higher up in the, in the air Right, and so it's it's just as scary to climb the next step as it was the first step. It's just in a different way. You know there's, there's maybe, um, I want to say there's more at risk. When, when you first started out, you got nothing but you're risking. You know, you're saying, well, if you got nothing to risk, well, you're risking what you could have, you're risking what you could be doing alternatively. And then when you accumulate stuff now, you're risking stuff you accumulated and what you could be doing. So you know, but you realize, okay, I could be doing a lot of things. I can get back from, you know, point A to point B pretty quick, but I've got a lot more at risk with 30 people at risk or 100 people at risk now, or I've got a thousand clients at risk or a million customers at risk.
Speaker 2:
If I get this wrong and it just yeah, it's, it's you're kind of resetting the baseline right, yeah, baseline where you're going to experience these two feelings kind of just raises every time you hit that new plateau yeah, like if you had an earthquake every day for the rest of your life, like on a richter scale of like one right.
Speaker 1:
You would eventually say that's just normal, right, I'm not scared of that. It would happen. You went, but then all of a sudden you have a five. You'd be like, oh you know, I mean, and you'd you'd freak out and be like this is the real one now and and you would react differently until you have a five, often enough that you go, okay.
Speaker 1:
But there's always this next extreme level that pops in and it just jolts you back to reality. Like, if you need to be kind of set in your place, go ahead and start a business, because you, you, you will. You will have the experience, as we've talked about before. Right, there's no shortcuts to knowledge. You will have the experience. Not just any business, but a business designed for growth, a business that is going to be bigger than you as an individual, bigger than anybody on your current team, you know, bigger than your little tiny individual, bigger than anybody on your current team, bigger than your little tiny community. It's going to be something substantial. You will get brought down to your knees more times than you want to imagine.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, this point really kind of brings in the first two that we did right, you experience all this stuff and there's no way to avoid it. And I think from the book and he talks about this it's okay and essential to have these feelings. They're going to happen. You can't really avoid it.
Speaker 2:
I think the way I looked at this was and he talks about this a little bit, I think in the book later on too, about the CEO needs to tell it like it is. Think in the book later on too, about the CEO needs to tell it like it is right and not being too positive or taking losses too hard. I kind of tie that back into this, where the balance and maybe what you're showing or like presenting to your people, having some balance there, being transparent, right, but being able to control the emotions of euphoria and terror is is the key there. Um, when you take it from the internal feelings to, how is that affecting the external and the business? So that that's how I kind of looked at that of what does it mean? After you experienced this and you can't, you you get as comfortable as you can be with it. How does that now translate into the rest of the business and your people?
Speaker 1:
Well, and you did the team interview with us on the ideal team player and we talked about hungry, humble and smart. And it seems like if you are hungry and you're in a leadership position, you're going to find these moments where you're like, oh crap, how are we going to get through this? Right, and you're always going to have these moments where you're on cloud nine, but you know you can't stay on cloud nine because you know that there's going to be a correction coming.
Speaker 2:
Yeah.
Speaker 1:
So it's like you know you're just constantly preparing and that comes with the hunger part. What comes with the humble part is being able to say, like we talked about in our last episode, okay, this is freaky, we got to deal with this Right. And even back to our first episode. There's no shortcuts to knowledge. Maybe we screwed up, but being able to look at that and say, okay, now we need to pivot because now we know that's different. And then that brings in the smart part. Because what you were saying, I think, is how do you articulate that to people? You know, like let's not get.
Speaker 1:
And Jim Collins talks about this in Good Great, I think, or one of his books. But you know the hubris of success, that's euphoria. We are the greatest. If you stay on that peak for too long, you will not be able to deal with the valley. When the valley comes, you hit that euphoria peak. You can enjoy it for like a day. Then you got to move on. Same thing with the terror valley. You hit the euphoria peak. You can enjoy it for like a day. Then you got to move on. Same thing with the terror valley. You hit the terror valley.
Speaker 1:
You need jerk reaction to that. The reaction is going to be to kill, and that's probably not the right reaction. The right reaction is probably to build, which is kind of counterintuitive. The reaction is to turn around and face it head on most of the time, and you know you have to articulate that in a certain way. You have to be able, you have to be smart enough to be able to say, look, this is a great situation, but we got to move on. Or this is a very tough situation, but we got to move on. And you have to do it with confidence and conviction, otherwise the people following you are going to be like this guy's a basket case, right, right, like like it's a scary situation and they don't have a fucking clue what's going on. I can't follow that person.
Speaker 2:
that's when people start jumping ship yeah, if they don't know what to expect, every day they walk in like you know what, what travis or what dave am I going to get today? They're scared, right. They're not going to bring things up or communicate well, because they're going to kind of be in a shell waiting to see who's showing up that day.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, so be back to our ideals, be humble and be smart in this, because it's just a part of it. If you're hungry, it's just going to be a part of it.