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Speaker 1:
this is unleashing leadership. I'm your host, travis moss, with our season five co-host dave nurchey, and this podcast is all about our takeaways from different books that are inspiring to us. This one happens to be the hard thing, about hard things, by Ben Horowitz, and we go beyond just doing a silly little book report. We actually talk about the takeaways and how we've implemented those or observed those in our day lives and what's so great about that and so our jobs. Just for those who don't know, I'm the Chief Executive Officer of Seed Planning Group and Dave is the chief operating officer at Seed Planning Group. So this is real life stuff that we get to try out with employees at a fast growing firm to see if it works, see if it doesn't. Well, maybe we would do different going forward and, as always, do us a favor, like and subscribe to us wherever you are listening or watching, if you really like Dave being added to the show. This is his first season with us. If you love the contributions he's making, let us know so maybe we can renew his contract or something with him and keep him on the show. Just joking, we don't really have a contract, he just shows up and gives us his wisdom. But thank you, dave, for this season and your time. Our takeaway building something out of nothing. And this is really directed at why things are hard. The hard thing about hard things is it's not like you got a recipe book. You know all business is different, so we're going to get into that.
Speaker 1:
But first we're going to talk about our sponsor of the day, and it's Cutthroat College Podcast. I'm sorry, it's Cutthroat College Planning Podcast. We've got to make sure we get the planning in there. Got it? I'm getting better at that. I just go too fast, helping people avoid going broke because of the cost of college. Check them out at nqrmediacom or wherever podcasts can be found. All right, dave. Building something out of nothing, building airplanes in the air, herding cats this is, this is the being an entrepreneur. Probably not herding cats, probably more building airplanes in the air.
Speaker 2:
Like your episodes. I mean you got you built seed you got to talk about it.
Speaker 1:
Well, I think it's interesting because people will talk about, let's say, that you look at somebody who's been very successful, somebody who, who, who started a business Jeff Bezos, right? Or Elon Musk, or Howard Schultz, or Mark Zuckerberg, or any of those guys who start something and they become incredibly successful and trillionaires, billionaires or trillionaires actually at this point, I think Warren Buffett right Billionaires. And you think it's not fair. Look at how much money they get, look at what they have, and we could talk about the fact that most of that money is not even liquid because it's in the company. You can't just sell it, right, so it's not real. You can put it in Forbes, but it's not like they can just go and cash it out whenever they want.
Speaker 1:
But the reality is the reason why they get that, the reason why their payroll number is 500% of what the average employee is or whatever is because they're the ones who built something out of nothing. They're the ones who created something that didn't exist and now employs, in some cases, hundreds of thousands or even a million people. They're the ones who created products or services that changed the world. Right, and I guess that that's the big difference when, when somebody is talking about owning a business or being an entrepreneur or running a company, or if they're really, really good at something there are. There are people who are good operators. They can come in and here's the system you take it over now. And then there are people who can go in and they have the tenacity and the commitment.
Speaker 1:
I think we were talking a couple of episodes ago I was talking about the honey badger and we were talking about courage and determination. Right, they've got all that kind of built in there that, uh, they actually can create something that nothing, and not just create something but make it long, lasting, everlasting. Something that is becomes a fabric of society or fabric of local consciousness, if they're talking about a community or something like that. I do think that that's a unique ability. I don't think many people have that.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, I mean think of it like scale of something right, like the contribution that you're talking about is like worldwide, right, it's everywhere, and that it's just a different. There's no, there's no map for it, there's no one that says, hey, here's what you do to be successful in this role, or something right. Like you mentioned, someone could come in and maybe they're a really good manager, they could they really execute operations well and they just they, just you know they, they hammer that stuff out and it's great, um, and maybe someone's just a great leader of people, but they're not like it's still confined to that organization, I guess in a sense. But what we're talking about building something out of nothing there's a big, there's like a just a change in the way things are done. I mean you think about like iPhones and that right, and Facebook, the Amazon, I mean it literally changed the world. People shop.
Speaker 2:
You can on your phone and you get things delivered to your door. Like, so the part you don't see, though, too right, like that again they get paid so much money and all that.
Speaker 2:
You know Bezos lived out of his garage, or right, and like, or uh, the company was out of the garage and the sacrifices, that, a lot of them and not, maybe not all of them, right, but the sacrifices, more times than not, of you know, figuring it out for years, of not being able to, you know, just live normally or maybe start a family or do some of the things that an employee can just not even have to think about. Hey, I get my salary. I show up If I do my job. My job's not at risk, I'm just going to.
Speaker 2:
As the entrepreneur. When you're building something, you don't get that luxury because something can take your feet out at any time.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, there's a big difference between building something and tagging along to something, and I think that people, a lot of times, once a business is established, don't understand that. And I don't think that entrepreneurs necessarily set out to build something out of nothing. I don't think they go, oh geez, let's build something out of nothing today. I do think that there's people out there who try to invent things that haven't been thought of before, but I think that you know, you'll meet people who have a accumulated patents or have invented things, and they also don't go anywhere, you know, because all they're doing is inventing things, that that what's the actual application of it. I think what happens is that people have a vision and and, and um, who's a virgin galactic guy? Richard Branson. Um, you know, one of my favorite quotes from him is that you know I believe it's from him is that being a visionary is not seeing what's not there. So you're not saying, hey, let's, let's create something out of nothing. It's seeing what's already there, but that everybody's just ignoring it. And so you see something that everybody's ignoring, and the reason why they're ignoring it is because of the way things are being done. And so you say, look, we've got to rebuild this thing we got to, we got to create something that's that's very different, and we got to figure out how to pay for it Right, how to build a platform for it, how to you know all these other things that you have to figure out how to make work, because the reason why it's being it's neglected.
Speaker 1:
It's basically like having a child that nobody ever talks to Right, or nobody ever looks at, nobody ever sees. It's just as it's in the corner and it's just sad and it's by itself. And so then all of a sudden, you walk, you find it, you go, okay, I'm gonna bring it out into the light, and but I got to teach it to talk and I got to teach it to. You know, you go okay, I'm going to bring it out into the light, and but I got to teach it to talk and I got to teach it to. You know what I mean? Like I have to teach it everything. So you're starting, but they don't look at it as like, oh, I'm just going to go out there and start from nothing. It's the idea is something. Yeah, that's a good thing about.
Speaker 2:
We talked about Amazon, right.
Speaker 1:
And Bezos. Like it started out, as the book right Like uh right.
Speaker 2:
So he, he didn't invent reading or books, like change the way books could be the delivery, the delivery of it, and then it turns into so much more.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, yeah, so I, I, so separating or, I'm sorry, building something out of nothing is, I think, the byproduct of having a vision and saying we're going to figure out how to do this and having courage and just being relentless in pursuing it. And then when you look back and you go, wow, look what they created. But you have to be willing. I, that's just the difference between people who are wired to like wartime ceo. You know, we've talked about that a lot in this season in this um series and and in other books that we've covered. Um, that's the mentality that they have. Right, like, if I have to burn this thing to the ground and rebuild it stick by stick, I'll do that, and a lot of people don't. That's not the way that they think or the amount of anxiety and and it's almost more of a desperation type of feel it's just it's very difficult to to do that.
Speaker 2:
So, yeah, well, that was your thought process right when you left your current job to start, or you know?
Speaker 1:
yeah, yeah, I wasn't thinking I was building something out of nothing. I was like I'm just going to go do this a better way, right, which ended up building something out of nothing and then reinventing it and building you know what we had already built and basically starting over again and building something out of nothing. I've done it three times now and and the final iteration, I think, is very, very good and and we're actually looking at it again, saying what's that next iteration look like? And I think it'll look, when we're done, like we started out at nothing, even though we already have pieces. You know what I mean, but it's like. It's nothing like the final product.
