Strong Beliefs Loosely Held | Ep 799

0:00What's going on everyone, welcome back to the game. We're talking about growing our businesses, making more money, helping more people, making products that change and improve the world. That being said, today I wanted to talk about a little bit of a cautionary tale. Many of us have had people in our lives who we've looked up to and have created these very strong isms or these beliefs that they will die by. they have unreasonable or unshakable conviction that these beliefs that they hold are true. And so I'll give you an example and I'll tell you how this came to be. So I'm investing in a treatment clinic.

0:42So it's a business that helps addicts recover. My partner in that business was talking to someone who was going to kind of like advise or help with the business in a different capacity. He made a statement, which was, you should never work with your spouse. He brought this up to me because obviously Layla and I worked together. He said that this particular individual who was successful, whatever, had worked with their spouse and it didn't work and therefore made this rule about life. It reminded me of a different time when I went to a private equity firm. I was introduced to the managing partner.

1:19He laughed when I came in the door because at the time I had a mustache, I had my hair pulled back, obviously Leila and I were together, and he pointed to this sign on the door which said the only three rules that we have in investments here are no man buns, no husband-wife couples, partners, and no people from Florida. So I think part of it was a joke or whatever. The point is that people tend to have some traumatic experience. And when I say trauma, I mean that in the literal sense, which is that you have an aversive experience, a negative experience that permanently changes your behavior. That's what trauma is, by the way.

1:59So if you touch a stove when you're a kid and then you never touch stoves again, then that was a traumatic experience. It was an aversive experience that changed your behavior forever. And so these guys have these aversive experiences, these traumatic experiences, like the first guy who worked with his wife, the second one who hit The private equity partner that I was talking about just now, the issue they had was they had invested in a business where there was a husband and wife couple that had defrauded them. He said, what's interesting is that because of laws within the US, you never have to tell on your spouse in the court of law.

2:32And so basically, it makes husband and wife duos proficient fraudsters. I'll just put it that way. There's an increased risk there. Each partner can take the fifth when trying to tell on the other partner. All right, that's the simple. back to the main point. The thing is, is that I have so many times in my life, and when my friend, you know, who we're partying on this addiction treatment thing together, came to me and he was like, well, I was telling my friend about you and you and Layla. He didn't seem to like want to hear that. I bring this up because there are many things that you probably have heard in business.

3:04You know, no one can sell like you can sell. No one should ever handle the money but you. Employees will never work as hard as you. Don't go into business with your family. Don't go into business with your spouse. There's just all of these isms that people will swear by based on their traumatic experience. My underlying point here is that I would strongly suggest you relinquish those beliefs in your life because all you have to do is find a single example that proves or disproves that thing. Now, it's more helpful to say, I don't have the skill to be able to work with my wife. I don't have the skill to be able to work with my family, rather than saying anyone who works with family is an idiot.

3:51Anyone who works with their wife or husband is a moron. Not helpful. There's a saying that I think comes from the Silicon Valley world, but strong beliefs loosely held, which basically translates to you go as hard as you can on the stuff that you believe to be true, but you only believe it to be true, not because you like the belief, but because you believe the data that supports that belief. And as soon as new information comes, you change the conclusion, you change your belief as you should. And obviously with the, you know, recent political stuff, it's shown that a lot of people are not able to do that on either side.

4:26It's interesting because people have, they wrap their identity in their beliefs. And so that's where it gets very dangerous because you become very immovable. To be a successful entrepreneur as you scale, it comes down to being able to make your identity fluid. So hear me out. So this isn't some, you know, gender ideology, whatever. This is basically who you are, the bucket of skills that in total create the behaviors that you do, which then other people use to describe who you are. So for example, most people like to think of being as an action, which it isn't. Doing is an action. And then being is typically how people would describe the doing other people did.

5:10And so like, there's a reason back in the day, carpenters, it's like, oh, who is he? This is John, the carpenter, right? Like we used to describe people by what they did. And I think that that fundamentally remains true. If we need to become a different person, meaning we need to do different things, we need to have different behaviors in order to grow the business, then I think having a very loose connection between your quote identity and the actions and beliefs that you have is a very good way to speed up that cycle faster to become who you need to become to build the business you want to build.

5:44And I would say that for me personally, if I look at who I was when I started my first gym versus first, even before that, the first like online fitness business I had after that, when I started doing turnarounds after that, when we started gym launch, like all of these, if you were to interview me and you can, and the cool thing is at least, at least from the starting gym lunch until now, all of it's documented. And I haven't taken down podcasts that I disagree with. Like, I think my like seventh podcast is stop branding, which is kind of funny. Now I'm all about brand, right? But I think it's cool because you can actually see the evolution of thinking from day zero all the way up to now.

6:20Most of us have these very strong beliefs, but they are anchored in our identities, which make them strong beliefs strongly held rather than strong beliefs loosely held. And so I would encourage you to look at what are the skills or behaviors that I lack? And are there any strong beliefs that I have that are getting in the way of these actions that I must do in order to build the business that I want to build or move up in the company that I'm working in? Seeing my friend kind of like, you know, laboring over this idea of working with their spouse, which they had done in the past, and were told that they shouldn't do that anymore.

7:04And so coming to me being like, will you do it? Like, how do I explain that it's okay or whatever? And I just thought about this as like, I've just heard so many of these isms from business owners, and they're just all utterly bullshit. Fundamentally, from the ground up, why can't a husband and wife work together? There is no reason. The real reason is the same reason that any two people couldn't work together, which is that maybe you don't have the skills to work together, which is fine. There's also a likely a mismatch of skill sets or work ethic or whatever that would happen between any two people.

7:39More so, it's what is the likelihood that two people can work together if taken at random over a 20-year period? It would probably be really, really, really, really low, but it's the same likelihood of having a successful business partnership. Most business partnerships are not successful. I mean, hell, most marriages are not successful, right and so i don't think there's any issue with working with a spouse just like i don't think there's any issue with getting married right it's just that there are going to be successful marriages they're going to be unsuccessful marriages there's going to be successful partnerships unsuccessful partnerships you're going to have successful hires and unsuccessful hires and to refrain from making broad generalizations that will invariably prevent you from taking steps in the future that you will need to take at that point to get to the next level And these unshakable beliefs that are strongly held will often be the barrier that I have seen over and over again.

8:33Simple solutions on the other side of them breaking a simple belief that's dumb. That's my cautionary tale of the day. I hope you guys have an amazing day and crush all your goals and take the souls of your enemies. All right. Bye.