In a world where stagnation means falling behind, we debate the relentless 'grow or die' mentality and the bravery necessary to make leaps into the unknown. The immediacy mindset - a pervasive trap in our fast-paced culture - often clouds long-term vision, and we challenge this notion, advocating for an optimism that sees past current struggles to a horizon brimming with possibilities.
The conversation ventures through the highs and lows, paralleling the journey of entrepreneurs, to examine how maintaining perspective can turn setbacks into stepping-stones. We confront the different attitudes that shape our response to failure—do we falter in fear, or forge ahead informed by the lessons learned? By the end of this episode, you'll see why nurturing a positive mindset isn't just feel-good advice; it's the unshackling of a weight that allows us to step lightly into the future, recognizing potential joys even when our past is speckled with hardship. Join us for a thought-provoking session that will leave you inspired and ready to embrace the winds of change.
In a world where stagnation means falling behind, we debate the relentless 'grow or die' mentality and the bravery necessary to make leaps into the unknown. The immediacy mindset - a pervasive trap in our fast-paced culture - often clouds long-term vision, and we challenge this notion, advocating for an optimism that sees past current struggles to a horizon brimming with possibilities.
The conversation ventures through the highs and lows, paralleling the journey of entrepreneurs, to examine how maintaining perspective can turn setbacks into stepping-stones. We confront the different attitudes that shape our response to failure—do we falter in fear, or forge ahead informed by the lessons learned? By the end of this episode, you'll see why nurturing a positive mindset isn't just feel-good advice; it's the unshackling of a weight that allows us to step lightly into the future, recognizing potential joys even when our past is speckled with hardship. Join us for a thought-provoking session that will leave you inspired and ready to embrace the winds of change.
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Speaker 1:
this is unleashing leadership, and I'm here with travis moss and I'm with our season five special guest, dave nurchey, as we get after lessons learned from the book the Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz and today's big talking point tomorrow looks nothing like today, and that's brought to us by Ditch the Suits Podcast. I'm one of the co-hosts on there with Steve Campbell. We focus on helping people get more out of their money in life. You can find more information at nqrmediacom. I know it's got a website too. I can't remember it off the top of my head, too much going on. Dave, it's actually ditchthesuitscom, believe it or not. This is why I need Steve at all times with me or Dave. I have to be chaperoned. I can't be led on my own because I can't remember what the heck I'm doing from one moment to the next. But anyway, yeah. So Ditz D'Souza is our sponsor for today, even though I can't remember who they are, even though I'm on the show with them, and today's point is tomorrow looks nothing like today.
Speaker 1:
All right, so, getting back to our book and out of my own stupidity, I think I could take this in a couple of different ways. The first way is that when we're making business decisions and we're thinking about where we're going. We cannot be so enamored or so stuck in the way things are done right now right, the things that were done today, or the way that things are supposed to be being done, because that's how they've been done historically or that's how we do them. This is the business that we're in. I mean, if you think about the book, the guy morphs his business over and over again, basically completely changes it overnight, and it's a huge change.
Speaker 1:
And who else would come up with the idea of what they could be? Because what they could be was nothing like what they were. And he just happened to see it differently. And you, you have to be brave enough sometimes to say I understand, this is how I got to this point, but that's not how we're going to get to the next point. And we got to make that jump. Uh, in the infinite game, we called it the flex right. We got to do that flex, right. We basically it's now or never, baby, we're either going to make this jump or we're going to go to the grave with everybody else yeah, and that's the.
Speaker 2:
It's like the the grow or die mentality, right, like you have to keep growing and if and if you keep looking at today, you're always going to be behind that, where you should be, because you have to plan, you have to execute today, right, but you have to keep planning and looking at what tomorrow is going to bring and what the future is, or you're not going to grow, your people aren't going to grow, you're always going to be behind or playing catch up to competition or even internally as a company.
Speaker 1:
There's an issue too, I think, with our immediate kind of lifestyles that we have now, where everything has to happen immediately, and we could take this in two different directions from this. You could say, okay, we've really had some struggles, right, recently, we've had a bunch of struggles. Just because you have struggles now, does that mean that you're going to have struggles forever? And we get that when we turn on the news and stuff. It's like it's bad now, it's never going to be better again. This is the new normal, and I'm sorry, that's fear, porn, that's just people trying to terrify you, right.
Speaker 1:
But then it kind of seeps into our psyche that, geez, it's been six months or 18 months or 24 months or, or you know, three days, and it's been bad. It's just always going to be bad. And we get stuck in this. Tomorrow can't be any better, because because it just sucks Now, everything I'm seeing right now sucks. So tomorrow's definitely going to be bad. But then you can flip it the other way it's been so good, so good, so good, and then something goes wrong and it's like, oh, my gosh, it's never going to be good again, Right, you know? Or? Or what's wrong with us? We had a bad day, and you know, and it's just, we have to be really careful with the idea that what happened before has anything to do with what's going to happen next to us.
Speaker 2:
Yeah. Yeah, I like that point a lot and it kind of makes me think of celebrating wins and reflecting on losses type of thing too. Right, like when you're moving forward. So if today was a good day or good things happen, celebrate it, talk about it. If today was a good day or good things happen, celebrate it, talk about it, enjoy that, but also reflect and continue to move forward. And if there's a loss, you take the loss, reflect on it, move forward.
Speaker 1:
So I think you could also apply that there, where just because something good or bad happened today doesn't mean that's going to predict the future, right? Yeah, well, and speaking from like a conceptual standpoint, if you look at it like a business or as a as like from an investment, it's almost like people get ptsd. They're just overly wired and too emotional about things because they don't maybe understand the greater context of how things work. And so it's like if I took $50,000 and I went and hired somebody, or I went and bought something, thinking that I'm that's going to make me X amount of more money in my business or whatever, and it doesn't work out, and I lose that $50,000, right, because basically I didn't get any more productivity, I didn't get any more sales, I, you know, it was just a waste of $50,000. No, so do we look at that as a loss, like, oh my gosh, I lost money. Now I should never try anything again because I used to have $50,000 and now it's gone. Or do we look at that just simply as I tried an investment and that particular investment didn't work out. What can I learn from that? Okay, now how do I make the next one better?
Speaker 1:
Right, and I think that that's the difference in mentality between, like, if you talk about an entrepreneur and somebody who just happens to own a business because they didn't want to have a boss. It's like an entrepreneur looks at the $50,000 and goes okay, what the hell did I do wrong? Maybe I didn't do anything wrong, maybe it was just circumstantial and that's part of the game. Or maybe I did something wrong. What can I do better? Okay, let's go do this again.
Speaker 1:
They don't stop just because they had one bad experience. They keep doing it. Versus the other type of person goes oh yeah, that was really painful. I don't ever want that experience again. And I see it a lot of times with individuals. When we talk about investments, I have this one investment that did really bad. It's like okay, tell me about the other 20 of them. Well, they all did good. So you're afraid of investing because one out of 20 did bad. That's really silly. Think about that because you have this real loss in one out of 20 did bad. That's really silly, you know, like, think about that because you have this real loss in one out of the 20. So therefore, it doesn't work, but it works overwhelmingly positive in your favor. But you can't get over that one that's like just didn't pan out. And I think people get stuck in this. They get stuck in this pain of loss when it's just part of the ride.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, people tend to focus on the negative. You kind of said that earlier too. This is the new normal. It's never going to get better. It's easier to jump on that and agree with that and be negative and find negative people. And it's interesting when, when the majority of it's positive, why are we focusing on that? And you know, maybe part of that is if we kind of bring it back to the today and tomorrow thing it's. You really do have to be in the moment, right, you have to. You have to figure out what's happening now, live in that moment and figure out what opportunities or challenges are going to come from that, right.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, and I guess that's a good point too. We also I mean, we've had situations before we'd have a manager or something that just dwells on the negative. You know, time you talk to them. Oh, you know, I'm just making, I'm just getting by today, whatever, it's always a negative and it's like I think that that's part of that. If you always think bad things happen to you and you can't see anything that's good happening, or if things always, if bad things have happened to you and you can't see that good things could happen to you, you got to change your mindset. Because it's like you, you tied an anchor. You it's like what are those kettle balls, right? Um, it's like you tied a 50 pound kettle ball to your ankle and then you're you know you're walking around complaining that you know your leg hurts because you got to drag the kettle ball around.
Speaker 1:
It's like, well, just, you know, just disconnect it from your leg, like just take it off, like let it go. You know yeah.