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Speaker 1:
This is Unleashing Leadership, and I'm your host, travis Moss, with our season five co-host, dave Nurchi, and we're getting after lessons learned from the book the Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz, and we're getting after lessons learned from the book the Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz. Today's episode is about you always have moves, extend the game and you might get lucky. So a lot to unpack on this one, dave. It's brought to us by NQR Media Inc, where we unapologetically bring to light things that need to be talked about. You can get more information on NQR Media by going to the website nqrmediacom.
Speaker 1:
You can check out all of our podcasts by going to YouTube at NQR Media or just go to wherever you listen to podcasts and look us up. We'd love for you to actually subscribe and leave us some reviews, because you know we try to track how many people are watching and listening and stuff and it's hard to do so. If you just leave a review or a thumbs up or something, then we'll actually know how many people are watching. That's kind of cool, all right, dave? Um, what are we talking about today? You always have moves, extend the game, you'll get lucky.
Speaker 2:
I think, uh, kick this one off by kind of wrapping in a lot of what we, we talk about, right, With a lot of this stuff goes hand in hand when we're talking about the approach to developing people, building a company, being transparent, all of that. All of that is extending this game. This is the way I kind of look at it. The game being, you know, the company, business itself, right, being in business is like, is extending this game. This is the way I kind of look at it, the game being the company, business itself. Right, being in business is like the game, and there's always going to be different ways you can go if the direction you're moving is aligned with these kind of principles we talk about. And you know, we we mentioned in a previous episode the manager's creed that we're, we're going to be you know, coming out with and training at seed.
Speaker 2:
We, we taught, we, we literally talked about this where, if our managers are operating within this creed right, and they're they're following these principles of what it means to be a manager at seed, there's going to be right and wrong moves, to use the ensure alignment of the bigger picture. They're going to extend this game of business, right, and we're going to learn from the good moves and the bad moves, and that's where I think you know, eventually, enough good moves happen and that's where the luck kind of comes in there, right Is you're going to have enough good moves and learn along the way that the longer this business keeps going and growing, the better off we're going to be.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, I'm going to push you a little further than that. So, bigger picture right, pushing it for the bigger picture, because I think this comes into alignment with some other stuff that we've been doing. And what is that bigger picture? I give you a clue. We just worked on the project.
Speaker 2:
The Flex List.
Speaker 1:
The Just, cause the Just.
Speaker 2:
Cause, the Just Cause okay.
Speaker 1:
Right, Yep. So we just did last season was Simon Sinek and the Just Cause Yep. Well, the Infinite Game and the whole Just Cause project that we did. Um. So the idea of the just cause is that there is something bigger that you are working towards and and it's finite. There's no end to it or there's not likely to be an end to it. So you can. You can do all you want to do. You're never going to probably achieve whatever the end goal is. So if that's the case, then the way that you might approach it is infinite.
Speaker 1:
And we tend to get tunnel vision and I've been on community boards where they're talking about the community and what the solutions are for whatever the problems are, and they do this. Businesses do this. It's the. Remember the way that things used to be done and you know the, the and holding on to the past too hard, that kind of stuff. When where you're going is essentially limitless, the way that you can address where you're going, the way you can get there, is limitless. There's not a preconceived map for you. You might think in your head that there's only one way or two way or three ways forward, and this is this is the problem for a lot of people who don't, who don't allow themselves the flexibility for vision, Cause I don't think vision is something that only some people have. I think it's something that we're conditioned to, Right.
Speaker 1:
But if there are infinite ways to get to where, to go in this direction because remember there's you're not going to get there actually, Right, You're not going to be, you know, like in a just cause, you can't possibly help everybody, Right? So the goal is to help as many people as possible you know, find, you know, overcome their challenges that are holding them back from personal fulfillment. Right, that was ours. So we have infinite reasons why people are being held back. We've also had the problem with people even identifying what would be fulfillment for them, and there's no way that we can help everybody in the world. We can help a lot of people, but there's no way we can. So we can strive to do this in a million different ways forever, and we're not going to do it. We're not going to eradicate challenges and we're not going to do it. We're not going to eradicate challenges and we're not going to eradicate people who don't feel fulfilled, but we can try like hell to help as many people get across the finish line as possible, Right? So if we are not stuck in the roadmap, that is conventional wisdom about how you should go about it.
Speaker 1:
You always got moves, man. You always got something that you can do. You can reinvent anything. You can take the old, repackage it and make it look like new, Right. You can get out your cranes, you can make. You can get out your cranes, you can make a new.
Speaker 1:
I mean, ever drive on the highway and you go buy something where they're doing this massive project and they're they're basically carving out of the countryside, you know eight lanes and bridges and and you're like, how do they even comprehend this?
Speaker 1:
And they've been doing it since before computers. So it's not like it's just because we have computers, right. You know how do they even think of some of this stuff, how to build some of these things, Right. And so you got to be the builder. And if you're the builder and you get to a point where, okay, you know we were digging the foundation and we found some granite we didn't know it was there, you don't just not build it, you figure out how to use the granite. You know use it or move it or anchor into it or something, but you figure out another way around it. Too many people are very inflexible. I've seen this professionally working with with clients and whatnot, where people are extremely standardized in their approach to things and inflexible to do it any way different, even though there is no actual law that says they have to do it a certain way.
Speaker 2:
Yeah.
Speaker 1:
You know, in fact, in a lot of cases there's not even a best practice that says they should be doing it the way that they're doing it. They just learned it from somebody else and so it's kind of kept them in this box. And so I think what they're talking about is you always got more moves. You always got something that you can do. Are you gutsy enough to do it? Yeah, right, are you flexible enough to allow the ideas to happen? And if you make enough moves, if you stay in the game long enough it's an attrition thing Right, you're going to hit a home run eventually. Steve, the co-host from D the suits that I'm on, he has his own show. The one big thing we've done 550 videos that we posted on youtube. 550. Most we ever had, you know, views was probably a couple. 550 posts, boom, 20 million, yep. He tried 550 different ways to get a viral video and then he got one.
Speaker 2:
no, if he quit at 100 if he said you know what?
Speaker 1:
I tried all 100 ways that I found on the internet, I'm not gonna try anymore. He would have never got it yep.
Speaker 2:
So extending the game, a big, a big part of extending the game is that flexibility of being able to adapt and keep trying, but not the other side of that.
Speaker 2:
Right, that is, if you keep trying but you're doing the same things or you're not learning, or you're taking unreasonable risks, right, like, I'm just gonna, I'm gonna try this and it makes no, you know, there's, there's no reason behind it. You could get yourself in trouble as well. Right, so it's, yeah, you gotta have a reason. Yeah, it's making extending the game with you know, smart, smart moves could be, could be risky in a sense. Right, if you use that word, but it's a to the extent it's calculated in a way that it makes sense to to take that risk. Yeah, uh, going forward they.
Speaker 1:
Most of the time, people are just being babies. Yeah, I mean honestly they're. You know, it's easy.
Speaker 2:
The chance of failure scares people.
Speaker 1:
It's easy to be a whiny baby and sitting there drooling and blowing snot all over yourself than it is sometimes to say you know, this is damn hard to get through. And you know, when we started Seed and we started with nothing, we had no clients and no money. And well, we had clients, but we had gone and started a firm and had to re-get all of our clients. Basically we didn't have anything. When we started?
Speaker 1:
Certainly not enough to pay our staff or anything. So we're writing personal checks and all kinds of stuff, and my point for the first couple of years was put your head down and help as many people as you can. Put your head down and help as many people as you can and we'll get through this Right. So even back then, it was believing that we were helping people. We're going to help as many people as we can. That's our goal is to help as many people as we can, and if we do enough of that, we're going to get through this Right now. We had a business plan and everything too.
Speaker 1:
So you can't like discount the fact that you got to have a business plan. But if you're just a fucking baby and you're just sitting there saying, yeah, it's so hard and you know why isn't it coming to me and why isn't it easier, you're going to shrivel up and die Right and you're going to always be well because it's too hard and life's too hard for you. And what you need to be doing is you need to be saying keep trying, keep working at it, keep going after it, stop limiting yourself because you thought all the maps were drawn already.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, most people do not get that advice, unfortunately.