#1 CEO Coach: Effort Isn't What Makes You Rich, Do This Instead | Joe Hudson

21:23Joe Hudson:So, so there's either a lot of open-ended questions so that they can see. The other thing that I do is I love experiments. And so in our courses, all of, all of our courses, there's no talking very little, there's just experiments. And so if you can give somebody an experiment that they can do in the moment that shows them the thing in the moment, then that can resolve something for them like instantaneously because Because they have the spelt experience. A great experiment would be this, would be how do you enjoy yourself 10 % more right now? Without changing what you're doing, just you don't get to like get up and stop having the interview.

22:00Joe Hudson:But like right now, what's required for you to enjoy yourself? A better chair. I want better chairs. No, without changing the chair, without anything. You can't change anything. You can't change anything? Anything. Except for your internal state. I'm happy. Internal state. Oh, so I have to self - What? What's required? Okay, well, I guess I sat out more straight. Now I feel a little bit better. I'm pregnant, so everything hurts all the time right now. It's fine. It's how it's supposed to be. Probably that's it. Laughing. Like I could just laugh at something. That's not nice. Yeah. Is that what you mean?

22:34Joe Hudson:There's no, yeah. It's just what is required to make this 10 % more enjoyable. But it can't because I want to buy something else to fix it. Right. Yeah. Okay, fine. Exactly. Bye, Jill. Exactly. And so then the question is, if that's true, if it's possible for you right now to make this 10 % more enjoyable by being more present or by sitting up more straight or by taking a deep breath or relaxing into the moment, whatever it be, what makes it that your whole life can't be 10 % more enjoyable without changing anything? You know what I think is funny sometimes about advice or feedback about emotions is that all of us innately go, well, I'm pretty good.

23:13But if you could talk to my partner, so I'm sure you get this all the time. It's fine. I think I'm OK. But if you could talk to my husband, my wife, my, you know, whatever, whatever. So you do deal with these, like, I imagine sometimes stubborn, serious, opinionated people.

23:30Joe Hudson:Yeah. Yeah. Like, what are your mechanisms for breaking through someone or breaking through to someone who is really stubborn and maybe doesn't want to do this kind of work? But they don't want to do this work. I don't do the work with them, period. Yeah. I don't want to do it. It's like, it's like, why would I work with somebody that I can't have a huge impact with? Like, I have a choice of people I work with. I'm going to work where I get leverage. Right. So there's that aspect of it. As far as tools go, that particular tool, the blame tool, like the one I use is owning a projection. So typically what you can show somebody is that the thing that they're blaming somebody else for, they're also doing.

24:14Joe Hudson:It's almost always the case, right? When I say almost always, I don't think I've ever not come across it. So it's like, oh, I'm blaming my wife for like not paying attention to me. Oh, cool. So let's talk about all the ways that you're not paying attention to your wife or that you're not paying attention to yourself. And let's see if the problem is actually with your wife or with you or both. But and that immediately opens up the empathy response because they can see that they're also in it both for themselves and for the other, which is usually a lot of the resolution to blame is empathy. So that's one solution to the problem.

24:51Joe Hudson:The other solution to the problem is that usually when anybody's blaming another person, it's very easy to intellectually disintegrate that thing. It's like, okay, so you don't blame anybody else for your failed investment, let's say. Somehow there's world forces, there's political forces, there's geopolitical forces, there's market forces, but you're responsible for that. But somehow or another, the remodel of your mansion, your wife's responsible for. You're not taking any responsibility for that, right? You can deconstruct the blame really, really easily. Interesting. Intellectually. Because it's interesting, I think, as you get an adult or into business, you see the same thing.

25:37Like some of the biggest difficulties I have are like, huh, I see X. My executive or a counterparty or whoever sees Y.

25:47Joe Hudson:Yes. and no matter what, I'm trying to get my frame across, but I can't. And so there's either my projection isn't working or I'm not taking something back. What do you do when you're trying to get somebody to see your perspective? Yeah, that's a great one. So especially in business, I think this is a massive tool and it's a great unlock. So I don't ever try to walk into a room and convince my team or any team to do stuff because it's super ineffective. So I do it the same way that you would sell, which is basically, I want to hear all your objections and we're going to handle the objections. And every one of your objections, I'm going to mine for a better solution.

26:28Joe Hudson:Right? So I call this the no doctrine. So you walk into your team and you're like, here's my idea. Please tell me everything that's broken about it. First of all, they listen a lot better when they don't feel you're trying to convince them and they think that you're asking them for help. Great. And then they tell you what's not going to work. Now, maybe they're right. Maybe it'll change the answer 0.001%. Maybe it'll change the answer 99%. But we're going to have a dialogue over that. And by the time that's finished, we're all going to be aligned. So if I go and try to convince somebody typically what happens, or if I see my CEOs do this, they could try and go and convince people and everybody nods and says, yep, you got it.

27:07Joe Hudson:And then the action doesn't happen. Yeah, it's really interesting. We say here that like first layer is communication. Have you communicated what you want? And then the second layer is understanding. Do they actually understand what you want? And then the third layer is, do they agree with what you say that you want? And then the fourth layer is, is there incentive alignment? Like even if they agree and they understand and you communicated clearly, are they incentivized, you know, in whatever is important to them to do the thing? And if you don't have all four, things don't happen. It's a great way to break it down because the no doctrine, all four happen by nature, by the nature.

27:44Joe Hudson:And it's, again, it's that opposite thing. It's not, I'm trying to convince you to get somewhere. It is, I actually want to tell you why we're not going to be successful doing this. Interesting. Yeah, that's super useful. I love one of the things you mentioned earlier, which was work ethic. And I am increasingly, it's actually the subject of my new book and I've been obsessed with it because like I told you, I'm pregnant. And so I just have less time in the day. I'm less efficient than I used to be. Even if I just want to be really honest. I'm more tired. I'm slower. I'm all these things. Yeah.

28:14Joe Hudson:And soon you have milk brain. Oh my God. I can't even imagine because now I have pregnancy brain. I mean, I saw you in the hallway and I was like, I'm not positive, but I'm pretty, but I'm not going to say anything because I want to check. So, so anyway, you know, I'm sort of having to realize some human things about me. And this idea of work ethic is really interesting because I've always thought that you don't have to be miserable to build a really big business, that you might have moments of extreme misery. But writ large, a lot of the most successful people out there, I mean, Jeff Bezos talks about puttering around and having a coffee in the morning.

28:49Tim Cook talks about doing a workout every morning for an hour, not responding to anything. And then you hear a lot of the hustle guys on the internet that are like, you wake up at 5 a.m., you suck, you don't have a Lambo, like you should just keep going. And so I guess I want to know what if you, you actually work with the biggest billionaires in the world. Like what do you see as far as their work habits and work ethic?

29:13Joe Hudson:The entire spectrum. I have 24 seven guys and I have people who literally, I think maybe work effectively two or three hours a week, maybe. Yeah. So really no correlation between the harder to work, the harder you work, the more money. I think that there is a correlation meaning like i think the people who are obsessed with something are more likely to succeed and obsessed people usually work harder like i think there is a correlation there but i think it's the obsession that's important not the work not the ethic yeah like meaning and especially the kind of fuel that they use is another big thing right like if you're if you're working hard because you're i work hard because i am i would do everything i do for free that i do for money.

29:59Joe Hudson:I don't do anything for money that I wouldn't do for free. And I don't have to work. Like I could be done 10 times over. Right. And so I love what I do. And so I work hard, but I come from a place of passion and mission. If I'm coming from a place of trying to prove myself, trying to prove myself to dad, trying to look good for the neighbors, trying to be like number, like have the Lambo, blah, blah, blah. That, that does not last that like, you better figure out a way to get rich quickly and sell quickly and get out because it doesn't last a long time. You burn out, you know, and, and those people, what typically happens, you see this, they sell their company, they stay in their pajamas for one or two years, and then they beat themselves up for not doing another project, but they have enough money that they never need to.

30:51Yeah.

30:52Joe Hudson:Like that's what you see. And it, and it's not a happy life. It's not a happy ending. No. Right. And I'm sure you've seen this. Yeah, definitely many times. But I do think, you know, I've become, let's say internet friends. I wouldn't say close friends yet, but I respect him a lot with Tony Robbins. Yeah. The last time I was talking to him, you know, I'm like, come on, where are you breaking your word? Like, you know, you talk about the most important thing is the word you, there's gotta be somewhere, you know, you like had to think about it for a second. He's like, I'm honestly pretty good at it right now.

31:23He's like, but I guess the one place would be, I keep saying I'm going to slow down.

31:29Joe Hudson:Yeah. And I don't slow down. And he didn't have a voice. So he was like, I was here and I was here. And I told my wife that I'd slow down and da, da, da. And I haven't been able to. And I think that's because he doesn't see it as work. He's just obsessed. Yeah. And when he has a very different persona than you do, but when he locks in on you, you're like, well, I can tell you're really into this because this is like, you're here, you're nowhere else. Yeah. Yeah. That's right. And so it's interesting. What have you noticed from really, really rich people? Like, do they have different beliefs about money and success than you find with normal people?

32:00Joe Hudson:yeah so people who don't have money and want money they typically have some belief system hidden in there that money is evil or bad um maybe because their dad chose money over them or maybe because their dad was a power mom was oppressed by money or rich people are bad or something there's some there's some aspect that's going there they also have a hard time being grateful for the financial abundance that they do have and um i find people with a lot of money actually are pretty good typically not always but typically pretty good at being like i recognize that i i'm blessed here or lucky or whatever the word they're going to use is um that's one thing the other thing is that very very wealthy people money is not the objective and so money is a way to win a different game that they're playing.

32:59Joe Hudson:And so that's a different thing, I think, that's there. Wealthy people also realize that money is not going to solve problems. There's some problems it can solve, but it can create as many, if not more, problems. And whereas people without the money often think that once I get money, then all my problems are going to be solved, which is one of the reasons that keeps money away from them because nobody actually wants all their problems solved. Oh, interesting. Like nobody's like, okay, I'm going to press this button and you're going to be at absolute total peace for the rest of your life. You ready?

33:30That is a little scary.

33:31Joe Hudson:What are you going to do? Float around in this lotus flower or something? Exactly. Yeah. Interesting. Exactly. No, we're human. We want the ups and downs. We want the drama. Yeah. So there's a whole bunch of things. There's a lot of things hooked into money. I'm going to get free. I'm going to be happy. I'm going to be at peace. I'm not going to have to worry. And people with money, they can't buy into that very much. And I think one of the most brilliant things I ever heard was there was this young up-and-comer with this incredibly wealthy guy. And they're sitting talking with me. And the up-and-comer was like, yeah, I just look forward to the day that I don't have to work.

34:05And the guy said, there is no day.

34:10Joe Hudson:Everybody works. Everybody works. And this guy had plenty of money. But just managing his money was work. Just the house, it's all work. Yeah. Isn't that the truth? Also, I don't think you realize until you have more of it, how much like complexity gets added to your life with success. Yeah. So, you know, like the simplest your life will be is probably however it is at this moment. It'll never get simpler. And so all you're going to have is added complexity at some point. And complexity typically is some sort of problem. I think that complexity is, it's like bureaucracy in a company. You have to actively dismantle it.

34:47Joe Hudson:It does not dismantle itself. Yeah. And you have to fight against it. You know, a lot of these people, I mean, I always loved that, that George Clooney movie where he talks about only having the backpack and every single thing you put in it is an additional weight you have to carry. Now, he probably took that to the extreme one way. But if you think about it in life, you know, so many of these people who become massively wealthy, they have 42 houses. I mean, Peter Thiel's got a ship of mattress to all of his locations. Every time he goes at the mattress isn't there, he's upset about the mattress.

35:14So, you know, you're like, huh, that's a lot to carry.

35:16Joe Hudson:Also, a lot of those people are so smart that they love having a complex game. Yeah, that's true. Right? Like if chess is boring for you, it's really nice to play multinational, like six-dimensional chess. And that a lot of them are literally just building a problem complex enough for them to be interested in. Yeah, that's a good point. This is international mattress delivery. Yeah, exactly. What about, you have to sit across from billionaires. I don't have to do shit. Okay, that's true. You get to sit across from billionaires or people who do really interesting things. Yeah. Like, have you ever had to have a really hard conversation with one or like, what's the If I don't have a hard conversation in every coaching session, I am not doing my job.

35:59Interesting. So what's the hardest thing you've ever had to express to somebody or what's a story that someone could relate to from those hard things?

36:06Joe Hudson:Okay, I'm sitting with an executive, I'll give you two stories. I'm sitting with an executive team. and one of the exercises that we'll do inside of an executive team is we'll teach people how to be triggered by each other so we'll literally have people trigger each other and figure out how to resolve triggering conversations so that they can have hard conversations easily so everybody's like having a hard time triggering the ceo because the ceo had a had a penchant for getting angry and so uh so everyone's like well you do it joe i was like okay so i sat down i was like your anxiety and fear is going to destroy this company and everybody in this room knows it in front of the entire executive team but that that's like that's tuesday for me the other the other the other other what does he say he looked at me he's like yeah yeah you're right because if you're able to like pinpoint the really dark dark deep it's not just the pinpointing is I had no judgment.

37:02Joe Hudson:I could see him. I could love him as he was. I wasn't judging him. I wasn't like bought up in the fact that I needed to change him. Interesting. Yeah. The other great story was I was brought into this. It was like a, you know, whatever it was like a, like$10 billion market cap company. The CEO calls me in and he introduces me for about five minutes. I saw on your wall this great less words, more meaning. We aspire. Yeah. And so he introduces me and everybody's kind of checked out, half checked out, kind of listening. And so I said, okay, thanks for the introduction. I'm going to go around the table.

37:45Joe Hudson:I'm going to ask why each of you was not listening to the CEO. And then I'm going to ask the CEO why you continued to speak when nobody was listening to you. and everybody cringes everybody cringes but that's what like that's my job and what it takes sometimes it's just the efficient approach you know there's other ways to do it but in business like most people are have time poverty right yeah so and it's complete it's nonsense their time poverty poverty is nonsense but they have it and so you have to work within that constraint so you you need to show that there's going to be a lot of value very quickly if they're going to continue to invest in you.

38:26Joe Hudson:And plus, I don't want to work with people who can't handle it. Like, yeah, that's no fun. No interest. No. How do you get comfortable with saying really difficult things to people? Well, one is, you know, for, there was a while in my career where it just basically, it became every, I called it every time I pucker, I say it like, Like if I think, oh my gosh, I could never, and then I do. And very quickly after that, I learned that the more fear I had in saying it, the more it would come out sideways. So the important thing was to say it with like just a gigantic, big open heart, right? And I remember two things that happened in my life when I was doing this experiment.

39:06Joe Hudson:I remember two things that happened in my life. The first one was I was like 13 years old. And because of the alcoholic father and everything, I was super dysfunctional youth, had a green mohawk. I lied a lot. And I had a friend just basically come up to me and said, like, hey, we all know you lie. And we'd all like you more if you didn't. And I stopped lying. I just, like, stopped lying because of that act of compassion. And so in that story helped me recognize that it's compassion what I'm doing. Like, that act in that room is an act of compassion. They're all fucking miserable if that's what's going on.

39:43Joe Hudson:Nobody calling that out is just like letting something fester. It's like looking at a big boil and not doing anything about it. It's horrible. So that's one thing that kind of gets me over the hump on a personal level. And then the other thing was a friend of mine was hanging out with me at some point. And I was like in 36 or 37 or something. He's like, Joe, you're a dick. that was like no one but it got defensive he's like don't be defensive i don't have a problem that you're a dick like yeah just embrace that you're a dick for christ's sakes like you're a dick who cares like let's just like let's enjoy you being a dick that was his approach with me and and i finally gave up the ghost i was like okay yeah yeah i guess i can see how i'm a dick like i could see the way and what i noticed is in the acceptance of that it dwindled like it allowed me to like not defend it and not defending it reduce the shame reducing the shame meant that i didn't repeat it over and over again and all of a sudden i was less of a dick by accepting that i was in fact being a dick and that just like it opened my heart and i realized oh and so now when I say those complicated things, difficult things, hard things, one, I'm paid to do it.

41:04Joe Hudson:So it's like, there's an excuse. So I don't want to say, but I'll do it in personal life just as quickly. But the second is I, I've seen so many times where it's helped so many people, it's worth it. It's like, I've seen life's transformed because of a well-placed sentence. I've seen careers change because of a well-placed sentence. And so like, what, why would I hold that back from people. And yes, there's some people who get offended. It does happen. But it happens really rarely in my world now, personal or otherwise. I'm literally with a friend walking this morning and they were giving me those ruck things that you're supposed to increase bone density.

41:45Joe Hudson:Felt like such a meme. It was awesome. And we're walking along, we're having this conversation. And then just out of the blue, I looked at both of them. I was like, yeah so the passive aggressive anger between the two of you what's up like that's that's hanging out with me that is what it's like that's what it's like and do you ever get it really wrong where they're like what the fuck are you talking about well those are two different things okay i get the what the fuck are you talking about and i'm dead right and then i but i never argue so if somebody's like no you've got it all wrong i'm like okay what am i missing And then you just listen.

42:22Joe Hudson:And then I just listen because it's, again, it's not my wisdom, it's their wisdom. So whatever's available to them is the thing you work with. It's not what's available to you. It's really useful, actually, because I think in a lot of my arguments or life, if I think about it, it is this like control dynamic, trying to get other people to see my perspective, be heard, a fear of like, well, what if I just let them have their truth? Then mine becomes less relevant. And I know this is common for a lot of people, but it seems like you've kind of let a lot of that go. You're like, okay, I can have whatever frame I want and still listen to yours.

42:59Like what is the key to holding, to allowing somebody else to have their own truth and not letting it scare you that you can't have yours?

43:06Joe Hudson:Yeah, that's a great, great question. So this is particularly important, I think, for self-reliant people. People who are self-reliant typically had a childhood where they learned that they weren't going to be taken care of. And 90 % of the time, they also had a childhood where they learned that they had to take care of somebody else. Right? And in that is one of, there's many things. There's things like they have a hard time asking for help. They have a hard time saying what they want. They have a hard time saying when they're hurt. they have a problem with authority they don't want to be the full authority but they don't want to have an authority over them like there's a whole bunch of things that come with self-reliance but one of the things that comes with self-reliance is that they there is a deep craving to be seen and cared for and when you recognize that that drive to like see it my way that it is just that underneath drive of being seen and cared for then you can start saying well is that the best way to be seen and cared for and you find out it isn't yeah and that's that's what i've learned and and it's it's a particularly like a self-reliant thing that people have that kind of push in them and when that unlocks their business takes off because all of a sudden instead of an owner-run business it's everybody owns the business because as long as they're trying to push their thing it's they're the owner instead of everybody being the owner and it's a huge shift inside of a business when that when that when that pivots there is some things that a business owner can't let go of too right like you do need to hold your power you have to own that and like you could have a whole podcast on that but i would never let go of like this is our operating principles i would never let go of like this is the way that we do business or this is the brand because like the the the leader's job is to own the playing field but it's to create in a game where everybody gets to play for themselves you know and and as a team like both that like they get that but i will never let go of that that's the place where i'm asserting control is i find very useful and very very productive so it's like uh uber there's like five rules to uber right you get paid more if you work more you get you know you get paid more if you're at a certain location you have to get five star ratings and you can't cheat your customer or something like that right and they have this huge decentralized thing where everybody works and is productive and they don't have to manage anybody that's the part you have to own but if you get that part right then the business just because everybody gets to it's like a decentralized approach to your own business and you can see this happen berkshire hathaway the constitution united states 12-step programs itunes yeah it really works and it works inside of a company, but you can't do it if you're looking to be seen.

46:04Can I just tell you this? I spent 15 years in finance learning how winners actually win. And you know what the takeaway is? Most people work way too fucking hard for the money they take home. You know, I've built nine figure businesses and worked with thousands of companies and realized the same dumb mistakes get made over and over by me too at first. So I actually wrote a new book called Owner Be Own that answers the question, how do you make more money less miserably? I've broken it down into 12 profit levers, the 12 levers I've seen determine whether you print cash or hate your life. On September 18th, I'm doing something insane, teaching the whole system law and giving away a million dollars in cash and prizes.

46:39So scan this QR code or hit the link below. I'll send you your free invite. I'm super excited about this. We've never done anything like it. And if you want to steal my 10 ,000 hours and a lot of the lessons that Joe talked about, you're going to want to be there. One shot, never doing this again.

46:55Joe Hudson:I always liked the quote that I mess up uh who says it every time which is if you want to teach if you want to teach your people to build a boat don't teach them about ropes and nails and hammers teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea and i think there's like a portion of that which is like how do we get them to want to be a part of this to feel a piece of ownership as opposed to the tps report is due on thursday they all want to like nobody came into this office today and said i hope cody's unhappy with me today everybody came into the office today thinking oh i hope cody sees that i'm doing something i hope they're i'm seeing i like everybody here is motivated to make your world easier most self-reliant people can't see that so they're all bought in on that so it's like it's already set up for that level of success and so you actually have to actively stop that from occurring that is true You know, it's funny that that is one.

47:54We have a member of our team and she's lovely and a stud. But she would always say at the end of doing something, she would always say happy. It was a question to me. And I finally had to say, can you explain to me why you keep asking me that question?

48:07Joe Hudson:Yeah. And she was like, well, I just want to make sure you're happy with everything that's happening. I'm like, why do you think that me being happy with us is the outcome that we want? Do you think that that's good or bad? I'm like, this isn't a sneaky question either. I'm like, this is a real question. I'm very curious. Yeah. Yeah. And she was like, well, I think I just say it because I do want to make sure you're happy. I'm like, OK, well, like from my perspective, what I actually want is like, have we accomplished what we need to get done? Like, did we do the job? Right. What does do the job mean?

48:34Like we have a goal. We do the things we think we need to do to hit the goal. Whether we hit the goal or not, not always in our control, but like we've done the things to hit the goal. And in every single situation and me being happy or not probably should not be the defining characteristic of this. But, you know, to your point, I think as you become a leader, you have to start getting comfortable actually dissecting words, which can feel small in some ways.

48:58Joe Hudson:And recognize that that's the thing is people do want you to be happy because it's what makes them feel safe. And so you're not actually providing the leadership. But so I'll take that one step. I don't really even care. My biggest thing now is, have you done enough iterations? I don't really even care. Like, did we do everything to get the goal? I mean, how many experiments have you tried is my big thing now. Yeah, that's a very good point, especially in the age of AI. Especially. Because it's so easy to one-shot things or two-shot things. And that is done, but it's not. Every single person in our company has one of their goals is to do at least five experiments a quarter on their job.

49:41Yeah, I like that.

49:42Joe Hudson:It's so productive. It's unbelievable. And everybody stays interested. And you retain smart people. Yeah. Because bored people, smart people don't stay if they're bored. It's a good question. Like if you think about it this way to overly simplify, what do you think makes the difference between a good leader and a bad leader? Oh, there's so many. Okay. So, uh, what I would say is that if a culture has, uh, doesn't have the hard conversations, you have a bad leader, but it could be for many reasons. Um, and if they don't resolve those hard conversations quickly, have hard conversations and resolve them quickly are kind of the two things that you're looking for.

50:24Joe Hudson:If you have a yeller, you're not going to have the hard conversations. They're not going to resolve quickly. If you have a conflict avoidant person, you're not going to have a hard conversation. You're not going to, you're not going to overcome it quickly. So there's lots of ways of being a bad leader. But if you're looking for the two metrics to determine if you're a good leader, it's, are the hard conversations happening? are they happening quickly and are they getting resolved quickly if that's happening you're a good leader and that's what actually builds trust so you can't get a team of trust because everybody's nice to each other that's like that's what google tried it does not work like you need to have hard conversations that resolve into something better and that's what actually builds trust and i i believe your husband was navy seal i guarantee they had hard conversations that resolve quickly and there's a huge amount of trust inside of his team.

51:12Very much so.

51:14Joe Hudson:And that's just how it works. If people go through the shit together and they come out better on the other side of it, trust is built in a way that it can only be built that way. You have a saying, build the part you understand the least first. Yeah. What does that mean and why? So this is actually pulled from MIT Media Lab. So if you're going to build a car and you know how to build every part of a car except the catalytic converter, most people will build every part of the car, then built the catalytic converter, realize it doesn't fit and have to rebuild at least half of the car to get the catalytic converter in.

51:45Joe Hudson:So for me, it's what's the thing I understand least? I'm going to build that first. And then the next question is what's the simplest experiment I can run that will teach me the most about the thing I don't understand, right? So if I don't understand a funnel, what's the thing I don't understand about the funnel? What's the quickest experiment that I can quickly run that I'll learn the most about? And then everything just becomes a series of experiments. I never really try to get to this successful funnel. I just run as many experiments as I can as quickly as I can to get to. It's a great point because we say a lot here, like the more, the faster you move, the more money you make.

52:22But I don't exactly mean that. It's a cute sentence. What I really mean is like the faster you can have feedback iterative loops that tell you something real and then you act on each one of those loops, the more you'll get to whatever the right direction is more quick.

52:36Joe Hudson:Right. So it's the faster you move with real reflection, with forward motion. Right. And so that's what we care about is like, is there, is there, we, every week in our company, there's a, and that's every two weeks, everybody reports, this is my pace and this is my spin. Spin is wasted energy. If you look at your calendar, how much of it actually was useful. And that's what we track. And just bringing that into consciousness is the difference between moving fast and moving effectively and efficiently. What have you learned from working with these huge power players? Like what is so much stuff?

53:13I bet. Like what are the coolest lessons that you're like, I can't believe you paid me to learn that.

53:17Joe Hudson:The recent one is just how well maximalism works. Oh my God. There's so many people who are maximalists in Silicon Valley who are basically, okay, So I have one client who was bought by another client. So, um, and so he, he has a month of all this stuff until the acquisition and then he starts working. So between that month and like two weeks in, he has orchestrated three other purchases of the mother company of companies that he's always wanted to buy. He's a maximalist, right? The company that he works for is a maximalist company. Like, no, we're going to do this and this and this, and we can also do this and this.

54:04Joe Hudson:That thinking is amazing to be around and to see how useful it is. And focus is incredibly useful, too. And you have to be able to do both of those two things. But typically, I'm just learning how you can think bigger, and it almost always pays off. yeah and it's like how much of the constraint is actually in the mind what's interesting to me is that a lot of the people who are maximalists in business aren't maximalists in culture meaning oh i understand that i could do more and better in business always there's always more revenue to make there's always more companies to buy there's always more technology to create my culture is pretty good it could always be better you could have like the best culture in the world and you know that pays off in your business what makes you go that's enough which is interesting and i've always been a maximalist when it comes to culture like oh we can we can do we can make a culture that's just unfrickin believable but the maximalist in the like the material world has been has been really inspiring that's been a big learning for me it's a great point i mean it's interesting what you talk about two two thoughts i have one the culture comments It's really interesting because I find if we were to make 10 reels and one of them was how to rich, how to rich people think differently.

55:29And the second was how to build a billion dollar culture.

55:31Joe Hudson:Yeah. Nobody's watching the second wheel. Like it's never happening. Nobody cares about culture until you're really, really successful. And then I feel like people, and that's a gross generalization. There's a few who don't, but yeah, mostly, but it's, it's kind of wild that most people and myself included, I was like, cute culture, whatever, let's build this, get out of the way. And then as you scale, you realize, oh, it'll be the one thing that'll kill us. It's never your external enemies. It's not the enemies outside of the fort. It's the ones inside that you've let in, that you've created, that you've become a part of that always end up killing your company or your culture or your happiness inside your business.

56:09Joe Hudson:Yeah. So we have this product and it's only for like startups that have found product market fit who can scale to multi-billion dollar companies, right? But so they're in less than 50 people. And it's just all about getting the essential culture really tight. And so they come for two, three-day off sites and they do this monthly practice. Especially as AI is coming online, what's basically happening is more and more capital is going behind less and less talent, meaning the teams are smaller, they're higher paid work is being commoditized effort is being commoditized knowledge is being commoditized so all that's left is creativity and teamwork with decision making and decision making and wisdom right this is what's left that is how well does a team work together that that's what that is that is culture and so we're moving into a time where culture is going to become more important earlier and earlier and earlier because you're one accounting firm and another accounting firm and ai is going to do all the accounting yeah what what's going to be the difference what's going to be it's going to be how well that team hums it's interesting i think also people don't like it as much um because it's it doesn't seem as quantitative so you can say like well if you learn how to spend money on Facebook, you can get a two to one ROAS on your investment and then you can scale and you can make your first thousand, a hundred thousand, whatever easily.

57:41Joe Hudson:It's like, yeah, that's relatively quantitative. There's easy to put that in a framework and Excel spreadsheet and you can run. But if you really want to build big companies, you know, I think about, we have this one company called Pink's. They're a window cleaning company. And that's not an innovative product set. This thing has been around forever. In fact, it's quite unsexy, but the difference and why they've scaled to a couple hundred locations all around the country and why most haven't is because the two founders are really cool. They've got a really cool culture. They are meticulous about it.

58:11Like you have to have, you know, your pink, um, sort of washcloth has to be like cleaned and folded a certain way. You know, you're the uniform has to be done particularly the inside of the trucks have to be taken care of particularly. And so the type of people they attract to become franchisees and then employees is actually incredibly high for a window cleaner, right yeah you know relatively speaking and so they're they've been able to scale and it's not from what people typically think about in business right which is let me show you how i can close you

58:40Joe Hudson:faster than somebody else with this perfect line right yeah it's just not the case so that's interesting the culture becomes more and more important when you're in a highly competitive low margin lower margin business culture becomes really important and it becomes really important if you're in a super innovative business the place is where culture can like you can get away with it is if you're in a high margin, not so innovative business. I mean, you basically run meetings for a living in some ways, like, you know, basically nonstop. Most meetings suck. Yes. How do you run a meeting that doesn't suck?

59:13Joe Hudson:That is a fantastic question. There's so many things there's like, I've literally written out 20 chapters of like outline, like how to have great meetings. Some essential points, If you ever have a meeting where the outcome is we should have more meetings, that meeting sucked. Recognizing what the meeting's purpose is before you do it. So there's all the kind of classic things that I don't want to go into. I would say the mechanism that I... And one of the things we'll do is we'll take companies and we'll say, just send us your meeting and we'll dissect your company. We will tell you everything that is dysfunctional about your company from a single meeting.

59:55Joe Hudson:You can see the whole thing. It is so much fun. For you. For me. So there's so many ways it's dysfunctional. But the main thing is if you don't like the meeting, change it. No matter who or where you are in the organization, everybody in the organization should have the ability to say this meeting sucks right now. And that's the quickest way to change the meeting because everybody knows if a meeting sucks. and everybody knows what's sucking about the meeting it's true you know at least half the room will be like yeah this this this is this this is what's sucking about this meeting and if you actually just give people the empowerment to be able to change the meeting so that they're more effective that they will become more effective and there's other like little tricks like if i have a if i have an executive team i'll make sure that each of them run the meeting a different week that not one person's running the meeting over and over again and then their job is to improve the meeting each person who runs the meeting improves it and this is a really good thing because typically what happens in an executive team or in a team is let's say you're the boss then everybody projects mom and dad shit onto you and so they treat you they'll rebel against you like a mom or dad or they'll try to please you like a mom or dad but all of those dynamics go away when they're reporting to a team, when they realize it's not, I'm not letting Cody down, I'm letting the team down.

1:01:22Joe Hudson:And so the more you spread the authority through the team, the quicker it goes. So that's another like trick on making meetings better. But generally meetings should not be boring. They should be super exciting. You should learn a lot through the meeting. And if there's a way to avoid it, avoid the meeting. Yeah. Interesting. That's super, super helpful. I mean, we, we think about this a lot and we are not, I always think we have failed in some way when we keep having to have meetings. It means we're not, that's okay. It just means we're not good enough yet to do this. Um, and there was a period where we tried to do no meetings.

1:02:01We're not good enough to do that. That was a total fucking nightmare. And so, and I, and we found most of our companies that we advise that are small businesses have to have actually had a lot meetings because the rest of their organization is not very structured.

1:02:16Joe Hudson:Yeah. So other tricks, never have a decision-making meeting that's more than five people. That's a good one. You, at this point, should never have one-on-ones probably or very rarely. I'm so glad you said that. I used to get shit for that. No, it's so good. Talk to me about should you have one-on-ones if so, yes or no. Why? One-on-ones create more politics generally. One-on-ones means that you're asking different people to solve the problem instead of the team solving the problem and you want the team solving the problem. And especially at this level of organization, you want your team solving the problem.

1:02:46Joe Hudson:So you're not coming in and trying to get one person to do it. You're trying to get the team to do it. And therefore everybody feels responsible for the problem. Yeah. How far down an org do you usually go with that? Like I don't do one-on-ones anymore for that particular reason. I also found that they were utilized mostly, even by good people, didn't mean in a bad way, but utilized mostly to progress somebody's individual agenda and just led to more he said, she said, as opposed to what we've tried to do is when you have something hard to say, you're not allowed to say it if it's about another person and they're not in the room.

1:03:19Because by and large, whenever we have not done that, then you're trying to play telephone with two cans on a string wire.

1:03:28Joe Hudson:Yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely. We have a thing in our company that says, anything you say to anybody in the company, you should assume you just said to everybody in the company and everybody. So when you say something to one of us, you, they have the freedom to say it to anybody at any time inside of the company. There is no secrets in our company. What are like, when you've gone into these big companies, like I went to Dave Ramsey's and he's become a buddy too. And I, I remember he told me we don't gossip at this company. And I was like, okay. And then I went around to a bunch of people in this company, not sneakily, but I just met a bunch of them was doing whatever and so i was asking them what's the deal with this no gossip thing like that's for real and he's like they're like yeah it's so and then they would repeat the same story which is how i knew it was true and and they would say yeah the first time that you gossip somebody would say hey by the way i don't know if you know this year we don't gossip so it's just part of the company culture the second time that you did it if the same person caught you or your leader or manager or whatever you were fired and so it was just like a no gossip thing no gossip And I kind of love, it works for him.

1:04:32That is like his thing. But I love seeing that inside of companies because it feels like the best companies all have like one or three or five things that you're like, that is so unhinged and brilliant. Like, is there anything like that that you've seen from big companies?

1:04:47Joe Hudson:Oh, I mean, I'm not involved in this company, but one of my favorite examples is Bridgewater films every single meeting, even one-on-ones. And then that meeting it's not just film then the meeting goes out and then people take notes on how you could run the meeting better it's like all constant feedback it's that same thing we're going to get constant iterative feedback i think that's and that's based on the principle that he has which is transparent markets are efficient markets and this business is a marketplace and he recognizes the marketplace of a hedge fund everyone's trying to get ahead that's an example of like an amazing, an amazing example of somebody who's going all the way.

1:05:27Joe Hudson:I think Valve is also a company that does some, like they decide their projects by where you roll your desk. So everybody has rolling desks. I don't know if it's, this is past COVID, pre-COVID, but basically the employees vote on what projects are gonna, and this is a company that makes more money per person than Apple or Microsoft. Wow. Yeah. So they just basically have a fully decentralized approach. And I think you can get away with like a deeply decentralized approach if you have those four or five really elegant rules in place that maintain quality and fairness, like the constitution or the Uber things that we talked about.

1:06:08Yeah, I liked my friend Amjad from Replit. He has a, he had like two things that I love that he does. And one of them is, I've stolen it, but one of them is he has an anti-sale on his recruiting page. It's like all the reasons you should never join this company. Yeah. And I love that because a lot of them are intense. It's like if you don't want to work so hard, sometimes, you know, you don't see your family for a while. It wasn't exactly worded like that. Probably don't come here. Right. You know, if you if you believe in closed source technology as opposed to complete open source technology in every single way and you want personal accomplishments on any of this technology, don't come here.

1:06:46And those are aggressive statements.

1:06:48Joe Hudson:The way that we look at that, we do it a little bit differently. We're like, where do we want diversity? where do we not want diversity? I don't want diversity with like dumb people. Like I don't want dumb people as a, as a form of diversity in our, and I can see some companies where dumb people, there's a place. I don't want diversity. Everybody who works for us wants to grow as a human being and is, and if they don't feel like they're growing as a human being in our business, then it shouldn't be there. But for a business to really be able to identify this is where we don't want diversity and this is where we do want diversity yeah i think is a really critical thing for building culture yeah it's a good point because most people haven't thought about it no no and these days for so long you weren't even allowed to say that you don't want diversity in some way shape or form you know you would have been like your pink your pink it's called pink pinks the pinks like we we want there's no diversity in anal retentiveness apparently right like it's like you you are this kind of person if you're working here yeah and that's fantastic like because why why try to get somebody into your company that doesn't fit like they're just going to be miserable you're going to be miserable it's horrible yeah it really is yeah we found at this company one of the things that i prize more than anything else you said in the beginning is like less words more meaning i really struggle with a super repetitive circular conversation, not grounded in data or facts.

1:08:17And it sounds like, duh, obvious, except a lot of people communicate that way. And so, you know, we've had executives before where I'm like, you're actually, your output is pretty decent, but the way that you communicate is so inefficient for the company that this is just not the right place for you. You're going to have to find somewhere else where you can do this circular conversation continuously and not make me want to kill myself. And that's not here.

1:08:40Joe Hudson:No, but that's a great thing to know. I think that there's two things that you're saying in that that I think are really critical for CEOs to know. The first one is that the proper, for lack of a better word, energetic structure of a company is that everybody should be trying to please the leader of the company. So why do I say that? If the leader is happy, then the company is doing well. If everybody besides the leader is happy, then the company is not doing well. So, and it's the nature of it. It's like, everybody wants to make sure that the leader is happy. Like that's part of the thing. So that's like a really important piece.

1:09:18Joe Hudson:The other piece is as a leader, it's really important to be able to just be able to say, because that's what I enjoy. Like I'm doing this because I want to enjoy this. and so but i i extend that into our company as well so as an example of this is every year we talk um if you're not excited that you get to work here and if we're not excited that you're working here we're going to help we're going to transition and it's not like are you doing a good enough job it's like i want to come in and i want to be freaking stoked to see you i want to i want to feel lucky and like that standard it's just it's been unbelievable for our success but also just for my happiness the leader happiness thing is interesting because um i can't remember where i was but i was talking about the same idea not even about me a lot of our member companies but there's only one person that like if you remove them writ large your business collapses entirely and it's you.

1:10:22And so, you know, I think it's so important that people like you are saying this because a lot of leaders have, it feels like we've been trauma bonded over like entrepreneurial PTSD to the point where it only is fun if, or it's only acceptable if we say everything is miserable all the time. And if in any way, shape or form, we say, actually, I want to be relatively happy in order to have endurance or sustainability in this. It's like, uh, wuss, you know, like yuck and so but yet most companies fail because the person gives up the person in charge and then

1:10:53Joe Hudson:all of your employees what are they going to do that's right so i love hearing that especially from somebody that works with people who by and large also if you're happy the company's doing well yeah you know what i mean like but don't you want your company to do well i want to end on this question, which is, um, like there's a lot of people that see themselves as self-reliant. I don't need anybody, you know, people, these women, I don't need no man, you know, like I can do this all by myself. You know, you're in my way. Just watch me. I got this, right. This is like very cultural zeitgeist. I mean, there's a whole segment of the internet I didn't know about called elder daughter, which is just all about how elder daughters are completely unreasonable and, uh, I'm very self-reliant, which I am one.

1:11:36So I was like, oh, this is interesting. This is all through line. But you basically say that success is not self-reliance.

1:11:46Joe Hudson:Self-reliance can be like incredibly successful at a very small scale, but you can't grow anything of significance without the help of people. And the better you, the more you're like, I'm all alone as a CEO, the more you are in self-reliance. the more you feel all alone the more you're in self-reliance the more you can't like walk into an office and go oh my goodness all those people they're all here to make my life easier how about that and they all care enough to do that like as long as you can't see that you're in a self-reliance mechanism it means that you're having a hard time asking for what you want it means you're having a hard time asking for help it means you have you're not fully in your own authority and you rebel against authority.

1:12:33Joe Hudson:And so there's a lack of authority in the company. Often there's like, there's this kind of weird thing that happens there that I could go into. It means that, um, it means that you, uh, have a hard time saying when you're hurt. So that's why a lot of the CEO trauma bonding happens. There's like, I'm miserable because they can't say, wow, it really hurts that you didn't do the thing that you said you were going to do. And I noticed that I'm not trusting you as much right now. And I don't, I don't want that. How do we fix that? CEOs have a tendency of not being able to do that because they're like, no, that to that way is going to be hurt because somebody like, I'm not going to be taken care of because that's basically where self-reliance comes from is this idea that I'm not going to be taken care of that comes from childhood.

1:13:19Joe Hudson:When you can get over that, then your company can explode like so well, like explode is and grow very quickly because you unleash people to actually help you instead of having to manage everybody and tell everybody what to do and be like, oh, they didn't do it well enough, et cetera, et cetera. It's so good. I know I'm going to be going back to this episode, having all my leaders listen to it too. Where do you like people to follow you the most? We've got YouTube. YouTube. And it's just your name? Joe Hudson. Yeah. YouTube. Yeah. If you want to, If you want personal transformation, the best is going to the YouTube and the podcast and the coachings.

1:14:00Joe Hudson:Those are definitely the things that drive a lot of change in people. I get emails constantly of people's lives changing. Well, and I don't even know if I'm allowed to ask you this, but I bet you charge these guys a lot of money. A lot of money. One on one. A lot of money. Most of what I do is I charge. Are we talking five or six figures? I charge a percentage of what we grow together get the fuck out I go by stock I what's the most amount of money you've ever been able to get from help have you been able to make like seven figures off of your help I love that nod that's a really smart way to do it yeah so I just do it I just like if the company grows like it like that um i told you about the thing the council where we help people with the getting their culture right yeah we just take a percentage of the company we don't even charge so you're really selective on who you take because you're like you guys better be good otherwise you're not getting me if they're committed to their culture and they are in that 50 person or less company that has product market fit we take them because that's the those are the criteria.

1:15:08Joe Hudson:We keep it simple. I love that. But yeah, so we just get a percentage of what we create. Well, we stand behind the work. Thank you for being here with us today. We don't get to steal any of these people's upside, you know, but they got all your juice for nothing. So thanks for being on this podcast. This was so useful for me. And I know they're going to love it too.