Human-Centered Design & Entrepreneurial Strategies for Public Leaders: Testing, Failing Fast, and Maximizing Growth w/ Andrew Hutton

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Hello. My name is Skippy Mesereau, coach, former
elected official, and lifetimepublic servant. Welcome to
Healing Our Politics. The showthat shows you, the heart
centered public servant andpolitical leader, how to heal
our politics by starting withthe human in the mirror. It is
my job to sit down or stand upwith the best experts providing

(00:39):
you actionable, practical,tactical tools that you can test
out today in your life and withyour teams.
I will also talk to leadersacross the globe with a self
care practice, getting to knowthem at a deeply human and
personal level so that you canlearn from their challenges and
journey. Warning, this is a postpartisan space. Yes, I have a

(01:01):
bias. You have a bias. We allhave a bias.
Everybody gets a bias. And Iwill be stripping out all of the
unconscious cues of bias fromthis space. No politics,
partisanship or policy herebecause well-being belongs to
all of us and we will all bebetter served. If every human in

(01:23):
leadership, regardless of party,ideology, race, or geography,
are happier, healthier, and moreconnected. This show is about
resourcing you, the human doingleadership, and trusting you to
make up your own damn mind aboutwhat to do with it and what's
best for your community.
So as always, with love, here wego. This episode is all about

(01:52):
transferrable knowledge,learning from another wisdom
tradition, and I sit down withentrepreneur and expert in human
centered design, Andrew Hutton.Andrew is cofounder of Day 1, a
teacher, coach, and formerprofessor at the illustrious
Parsons School of Design and anElected Leaders Collective board

(02:14):
member. In this episode, wediscuss how a pig farm in Uganda
took him from West Wing dreamsto the mean streets of
entrepreneurship, theprinciples, practices, and
strategies of an entrepreneurialmindset and how they can be
applied in your public servicejourney, human centered design

(02:34):
and design thinking, how you canuse small tests to improve
professional and personalefficacy and mitigate downside
risk, creating positiveconstraints to encourage growth,
how to fail forward and build aresilient mindset, the necessity
of accounting for societalfactors when planning

(02:56):
professionally and otherwise,how to use customer discovery
techniques, this is fun, tocreate better policies,
strategies to make failure yourfriend preemptively, and so much
more. I hope you enjoy this wideranging conversation with my
friend, Andrew Hutton.

(03:21):
And I think today the magic isgoing to be translating the
experience of the entrepreneurinto the public policy and
public service realm. Talkingabout taking feedback, how to
work with criticism, whatfailing forward is and learning
to apply these lessons with adifferent frame in service. And

(03:44):
so I am hyped to dig in.

Speaker 2 (03:47):
Me too. Skibby, thank you so much for that. I'm so
excited. I too had those samethoughts. I haven't dusted off
my political hat in forever.
I don't know. But you framed itperfectly. I'm sure we'll get
into this. This is maybe some ofmy language. I don't know if you
would have this, but, like,entrepreneurial learning and the
way you apply entrepreneurshipas a practice and principle, not

(04:10):
even to entrepreneurialactivities, I think is something
everyone, whether you're inpolitics or in education or
building businesses or just acorporate person or everything
in between, stay at homeparents.
I think life is better navigatedwith a entrepreneurial mind of
Yeah. Trying things out,figuring things out by doing
them. So, yeah, excited to sharesome of that worldview and

(04:32):
thought process and seed someideas and see what it comes of
it.

Speaker 1 (04:36):
Couldn't agree more. And I think about when I was
first involved in publicservice, not elected office yet,
but was also working on startinga company and went to something
called startup weekend, which isbasically like a 2 day boot camp
of taking an idea into practice.And I remember thinking at that
time, like, how the hell don'twe do this for public policy

(04:56):
frameworks? And so there is justso much of that goodness that we
will get into and that, youknow, you've created. But I
think for me, I always like tostart these journeys at the
beginning and with the humans sothat we know who we're talking
to, where they came from, whattheir learning process is.
I'm going to start somewherethat may go nowhere, but I'm

(05:18):
wondering if you could, and thismay be unexpected, but can you
tell me about 6 months buildinga pig farm in Uganda?

Speaker 2 (05:26):
I absolutely can start there. I honestly do think
that that's where myentrepreneurial mindset really
started because that experienceso I'll even, like, run into
that. Actually, here's mypolitical overlap. So when I
went to college I'm going allthe way back. So when I started
as an undergrad

Speaker 1 (05:45):
Some poli sci in there. Right?

Speaker 2 (05:46):
I went to school as a poli sci slash economics double
major. I finished with that. AndI wanted to be, no joke, I
wanted to be either Sam Seaborneor Jed Bartlett or Mhmm. I
basically wanted to be theamalgamation. I really wanted to
be Jed Bartlett, an economist,politician, but, you know,
basically, he was both, and hewas that professorial, but

(06:08):
wielded power, but was so humanand good, brought the Bible
verses out when he needed to,like, he had everything.

Speaker 1 (06:15):
Every presidential election, Ted Bartlett gets a
non de minimis amount of votes,and there's part of me that's
not pissed about it.

Speaker 2 (06:23):
No, not at all. And so that was me coming into
college. And because I was in myearly teens going through high
school when West Wing wasplaying literally for the first
time, and my parents watched it,and I remember watching it. And
so I got this indoctrinationinto The West Wing as it was
playing live, and I totallylived through season 4 being
awesome and season 5 sucking.That happened to me live as

(06:44):
younger than most peopleprobably.
Anyway, I took that into and Ihad some really great teachers
in high school. So again, partof my story, I'd say most people
have one of that that oneformative teacher who just stand
and deliver style, like takesyou and, like, puts you on a
pedestal or dead poets. I hadthat, and he was very much mix
of economics and politicalscience and philosophy and okay.
This is a long story, but maybeit's fine. So I took that into

(07:06):
undergrad, started these doublemajors, and was moving pretty
fast.
Right? I was able to take allthese other classes. I found
myself, again, the west wingsort of like was my life. I was
like, oh, I gotta be pre law. Igotta go get the law degree.
That's what the all these peoplehave. PhD in economics or a law
degree. So halfway through orlike my sophomore year, I chose
law degree. So the rest of mycollege time basically led to

(07:29):
law school. So did the LSAT, didthe prelaw, did the internship
that turned into like a jobwhere I got to really see how
law firms work, a cool smallboutique law firm in, you know,
the suburbs of Chicago.
Mhmm. And it was there that Isaw the sausage getting made,
and I was like, oh, there's alot of paperwork, and it's like
90% paperwork. And these lawyersdrafting replies to responses to

(07:53):
huge reams of submissions. AndI'm like, oh, law is like a tiny
bit, not even a tiny bit, like0% of law is like arguing before
the supreme court. And99.9999999 percent of law is
wasting people's money in, like,a zero sum game that lawyers are
the only winners.

Speaker 1 (08:11):
They always win.

Speaker 2 (08:12):
Sorry. It's all the lawyers. Right? So the 21 year
old me, I got to the end of mycollege career. I had been
accepted into law schools.
I had got my scholarships. I wasdown to my final 2 or 3 choices.
And I was basically like, littleexistential crisis, do I really
need to go to law school to dowhat I wanna do in life? And

(08:32):
obviously, I didn't really knowwhat I wanted to do in life, but
I wanted to be more than alawyer. I wanted to be a CMC
board.
Right? More than a lawyer.Right? I wanted to have impact
on the White House. Maybe Ishouldn't take on 6 figures of
debt and spend 3 extra yearsjust getting a degree that I
don't really need if I justwanna go hit the ground running.

Speaker 1 (08:48):
I just wanna point out something right here because
I just so appreciate this aboutyou as you have a very
insightful observational mind,but you're very practical. You
know? Like, I just you didn'tget tied up in I locked out.
Title of lawyer, etcetera. Like,you just

Speaker 2 (09:02):
for a long time. That's the thing. Okay. I was
probably just a little ahead formy age. Right?
Like, most college kids are notnecessarily thinking this way.
I, like, had that on. I, like,had that as my identity for,
like, 3 or 4 years of college.But then I think a lot of young
folks go through that quarterlife crisis where they're 25 and
they're like, why did I startthis path? Yeah.
I had that 3 years earlier. So Igot to have the crisis at 21, 22

(09:26):
without spending those postcall. So college wasn't wasted.
I got an entire sequence of lifehappened, but that takes us to
Uganda. Because as I finishedcollege, and I said, like, no,
and basically let all of myacceptances to law school lapse,
I had nothing to do.
So what do you do when you're a22 year old? So again, super
fortuitous. I had a friend whograduated, who knew a little bit

(09:49):
more what he wanted to do withhis life, and he had, over the,
like a year or so, had set upthis really cool social
business, literally a pig farm.So this is where it happened. So
really forward thinking guy,someone I was already admiring
as like a 22 year old.
He set up this project byraising money, going over to
Uganda, to the small villageoutside of Kampala, and hooked

(10:13):
up with a orphanage to buildthem a farm to be a sustainable
source of revenue. Cool idea.Social business idea. I was
totally into it.

Speaker 1 (10:23):
How did he target Uganda?

Speaker 2 (10:25):
So he had some connections. He had done some
volunteering over there. So thisorphanage was something that he
was already connected to. That'sthe thing. So Got it.
You know, like a churchconnection or something.

Speaker 1 (10:35):
First people listening who are like, Uganda,
where is that on a map? It's anEast African country, sort of
Central East.

Speaker 2 (10:41):
Yeah. West of Kenya, landlocked, but it is on Lake
Victoria, which is the source ofthe Nile. Beautiful. And what

Speaker 1 (10:49):
Winston Churchill called the pearl of Africa. It's
deeply rich. It's really cool.Beautiful culture, former
English colony, so Englishspeaking, so easier to navigate.
So just a number of reasons whysome might might end up there.

Speaker 2 (11:01):
Exactly. Exactly. And it's sandwiched between Kenya
and Rwanda. Right? And andKampala is near Entebbe.
Entebbe is I don't know hismovie about it. Yeah. So he had
this thing going. Again, superfortuitous. He was he was doing
this cool thing.
He actually set it up over,like, the summer after
graduating, and then it waslike, I gotta come home, but

(11:22):
this is not ready to, like, justgive away. Like, it's not ready
to stand on its own. So heliterally asked me I can't
remember why it made sense. Ithink we were just catching up.
I told him I was a free agent.
And he's like, why don't youcome over to literally Africa
and just do what I was doing andrun this thing and shepherd it
for a chunk of time. Mhmm. Idon't know if it was right away

(11:43):
or let me think about it, but Ihad nothing going on. So I said
yes. So I think, again, withoutbeing like, this is like my
operating model for life, I wasjust like, let's just say yes to
things.
Yeah. And I think it's a goodoperating model for life
generally to say yes to bigthings that seem scary. Because
when you get into them, even ifthey are actually scary and hard
and, like, kinda crazy, you'llbenefit from them.

Speaker 1 (12:05):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (12:06):
And so I'm a huge fan of, like, throwing your hat over
the wall and forcing yourself togo get it, That metaphor. Right?
So if you're you're staring at awall and you're, like, really
scared to try, do a thing that'seasy. Throw your hat. And then
all of a sudden your brain goes,well, now I have to go get it.
So take the decision to do thehard thing away from yourself so
that you end up saying yes byalmost by automatic. Like, I

(12:28):
gotta go get my hat or else mymom's gonna kill me kind of
thing. Right? Yes. Throw yourhat over the wall and go get it.

Speaker 1 (12:33):
Taking a risky action knowingly, but you're doing so
in such a way that creates bothpositive and negative
constraints to force followthrough.

Speaker 2 (12:42):
To force follow through. If I had to, like, wake
up every day and say I'm goingto Africa, eventually, you say
no because you just getrealistic or something.

Speaker 1 (12:49):
Right? Flight.

Speaker 2 (12:50):
But you just got exactly three flights and stuff
like that. So that's how ithappened. So then I got over
there. Crazy. You're right.
Like, English speaking, that'skind of the one positive thing
in a sense of, like, acustomization, but, like, wildly
different culture, completelydifferent. And I was, like, the
boss of this business. Again, Iwas an entrepreneur without
being an entrepreneur becauseWere

Speaker 1 (13:10):
your, quote unquote, employees, Ugandans?

Speaker 2 (13:13):
Yep. Yep.

Speaker 1 (13:14):
Yep. Was there an incoming distrust or frustration
with an outsider being the onein the decision making role?

Speaker 2 (13:21):
Definitely a little bit of that. Again, like most
organizations, there was like apartner board level. The the
orphanage had a leadership team,and they were co bosses. They
were the boss, kind of. I wasnext underneath them.
Right? But I kinda answered tothem. It was their land. It was
their everything. We were guestshelping them.
Right? So we're obviouslylistening and taking direction.

(13:42):
But then I had a person who wasa actually a what do you call
it? A university grad who waslike an agricultural degreed
university grad to helpagronomically run the farm. Then
we had, like, half a dozenfarmhands, local guys.
And obviously, like, I don'tknow anything about their life.
You know, that's such adistance. But, yeah, just got
thrown into, like, running abusiness. I literally did things

(14:03):
like take a taxi into town and,like, buying feed and materials
and loading them up on, like, arented truck and getting them
back. Crazy things.

Speaker 1 (14:12):
Like a moto with Yeah. Like a boda boda. Yeah.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (14:15):
Yeah. I don't know. Everything you think about doing
business in the US times, like,10 and it's silliness. I bought
supplies. I sold pigs.
I slaughtered pigs, which is notcool and fun. It was wild. I
literally went to, like,government offices to go get
stamps of approval. I bought atruck. Those sound like decently

(14:36):
standard, but, like, everythingwas nuts.

Speaker 1 (14:38):
Yes.

Speaker 2 (14:39):
So let me let me wrap this up to say I spent 6 months
over there. Right? Really coolopportunity. I mentioned this
was the beginning of myentrepreneurial mindset because,
yes, I was running a businessand really, I wasn't treating it
very entrepreneurially. I had nocraft.
I didn't know anything aboutentrepreneurship or business. I
was just doing stuff.

Speaker 1 (14:56):
You're just showing up out of curiosity, like left
foot, right foot, basically.

Speaker 2 (15:00):
And failing forward 100%. And not even again, not
even failing forward in a waythat I would advise an
entrepreneur to do today, whichis test something, try something
out. Just like doing my best tostay in the game day to day and
then, like, little failures. Andthere's coming up the next day,
picking yourself up and beinglike, well, we can't just, like,
leave. So what do we do next?

(15:20):
Right? We lost this. This didn'tcome up to as as far as we
wanted. This cost more than wewanted it. We got less.
What do we do? What do we do? SoI spent 6 months there because I
got, like, burnt out. I wasjust, like, failing forward, had
all sorts of challenges. I kindagot to the end of my, like,
everything.
Kinda told my tapped outessentially and said, I gotta go
home. Can you come back in andreplace me? But really, I came

(15:44):
back debriefed, decompressed fora while. I realized that I had,
like, raised the bar in my lifefor hard things that I've ever
done. And again, I'm kind oflike a decently insulated kid
who, like, the hardest thingI've ever done was, like, take
an AP test.
Yeah. I, like, really shot up interms of tough things. And even
though I hadn't necessarilysucceeded, I failed. And I think

(16:05):
I did own that. I said, like,man, this thing is further along
than when we started, but we didnot get our profit margins.
We did not do this, that, orthat as a business.

Speaker 1 (16:13):
What are the specific things that you had failed to
hit?

Speaker 2 (16:16):
So, you know, our our product was to raise pigs, and
they were not growing as fast aswe wanted them to. We weren't
getting the prices at market.Mhmm. We had this plan to, like,
store the feed during the thedry season instead of buying it
at all the times, but then wegot, not moldy, but it got,
weevil. Bugs were getting intoit.

(16:37):
Mhmm. And so we, like, lost someof that. We just had stuff go
bad. All the things, like,again, if you have a business
model, you say, like, here's mytop line. I'm gonna sell x
number of pigs for y price.
Here's my cost basis. This ishow much stuff we're gonna lose.
All of those numbers are worsethan you wanted them to be, and
it was operationally, like, myfault.

Speaker 1 (16:54):
Interesting. I'm curious if this rings true to
you, but what stands out for mehere is we often, I think, can
make the assumption of, like,oh, selling pigs is an easy off
the shelf business. People do itall the time. They suck at this
in Uganda. I'm gonna go do it.
And we fail to take into accountthe environmental factors that

(17:14):
make it as such, which is like,yes, you can always get the feed
right in America because youhave guaranteed power of the
electric grid. And so you're notgoing to have infestation from
things That doesn't exist there.You can go to the market and
have a price here becausecontract law is the norm and the
expectation, but there, it'snot. And so, all of a sudden,

(17:35):
this easy thing, once you're inthat environment, turns out to
be just as hard as it is foreveryone else.

Speaker 2 (17:40):
10000%. 10 and then chalk it up to the fact that,
like, I was getting the worstprice from everybody because I'm
a white dude walking in. Right.Yes. So I'm making mistakes.
I'm getting the worst prices,and we yeah. It was harder.
Exactly. We were, like, tryingto be these, like, white guys
coming in and saying, like, wecan build a better business,
trying to, like, be really smartabout it. And the reality is
there's a reason why people feedtheir pigs scraps because they

(18:02):
don't grow any faster when youfeed them expensive stuff.
They actually just grow at this.So absolutely. So if we had
framed the whole thing as, like,Andrew's gonna go in and just
shake it down. Just tryeverything once and just see
what the real reality is, wewould have had a much better
expectation. And that would havebeen the mindset to say, hey.
Pick a thing. Do it. It'sfreaking hard. And then just set

(18:25):
your expectations after. But wecame in with a plan and a goal
and all these things, and it waslike just miss, miss, miss,
miss, miss.
Mhmm. I think

Speaker 1 (18:32):
it's such a lesson in humility and also, like,
environmental attunement and Somuch. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (18:39):
So the lessons I came away with were just infinite in
terms of, like, okay, this iswhat life is really like when
you go do an unknown thing, ahard thing. But I'll tell you
the number one lesson, the,like, ultimate thing, you can
fail and survive. You're gonnabe here the next day. And so
don't just bite off hard things,go nuts. Go nuts because I came
out of that a year later.

(19:00):
So here's what happened in mycareer, right? I did that for 6
months with like 3 months on oneither side. So I chunk up a
year of my life to that.Afterwards, I went to grad
school, I got a job atAccenture, I did a bunch of like
kinda normal business y things.I was like playing on another
level compared to my peers, andI felt it.
I knew it because I had, like,gone through the ringer and

(19:21):
survived. One, I think I'm we'respeaking to, like, folks who
have been through ringers andsurvived. Right? So maybe you
can relate. Right?
But that was just huge, and ithappened really early in my
career, and I just felt like Ican go through walls because I
had kinda gone through a wall.

Speaker 1 (19:36):
I wonder what your direct experience of this is,
which is to say, yes. Whatyou're saying makes sense
theoretically. I think most ofus would agree with it
theoretically. Like, whatdoesn't kill us makes us
stronger. Yes.
And yet, there is, I think formany, I've observed, myself
included, I've been in thiscamp, there is a fear that if I
fail at something and I'm knownto be a quote failure at

(19:59):
something, that I will be insome way extricated from
community, cut off fromresources, exiled, not liked. No
one's gonna give me a secondchance. What was your direct
experience with that?

Speaker 2 (20:10):
Yeah. That you you framed it up the right way. So
came home from this experience.Again, wasn't the first thing I
thought. I was gonna sleep in mybed and, like, not get haggled
when I go to the grocery store.
I just need to, like, revert tomy life. But it was when I was
going to apply to new jobs.Right? And I was starting to
describe my experiences. And itwasn't just the clubs I did in

(20:30):
school and my classes.
I had this like work experience.And not just a work experience,
I did a freaking big hard thing,took a huge leap. Here's where I
learned it and I learned it socleanly. I started to admit, I
did this hard thing. It did notgo as planned.
I'll say I failed. I had to tapout. Business didn't work. I was
emotionally burnt out. I had topass the keys back.

(20:53):
And that was the end of thestory, frankly. I'm like in
these interviews, like, I likeAccenture. Yeah. I like
distinctly remember a couple ofthem where I would recount the
story and like use that. So Iwas obviously portraying that I
was very humble, portraying thatI was learning a lot, portraying
that I was on the other side ofit, and I really chalk those
stories up.
Again, I wasn't on the winningside yet. I was kind of in the
middle portraying these stories,and I think that's what set me

(21:17):
apart.

Speaker 1 (21:18):
Do you remember were you scared to share that? Do you
remember what you felt like?

Speaker 2 (21:21):
I think I had internalized that this is how to
frame it. I don't know why.Like, so again, I was probably
what you're saying is, like, abig deal to me because I had
started to recognize that thisfailure was my differentiator,
that this was not a negativething on my resume, that this

(21:42):
was what set me apart. And whenI played that card in that way,
it absolutely turned into it wasthat. And I just recognized it.
Again, we only see things inhindsight, but a few months
later, I was looking around atmy peers who joined when I
joined at Accenture. It'sAccenture management consulting
firm, not the craziest exclusivething, but not the easiest to
get into. And I'm like, why didI get in? Oh, I really probably

(22:04):
looked like a 1% because I haddone something. I had really
done something different tostand out.
And I had the mindset that I wasway more mature, I think, than
well, I was also, like, 24 atthe time, and so I was not just
a recent grad. I had life undermy belt. And it just, like,
clicked for me. So those twoexperiences together between
doing the thing, surviving it,recognizing that this is now my

(22:27):
story, I'm gonna own it. Andthen seeing how that played out
as positive in other people'seyes, just solidified for me
that just do things.
2 things happen. You either winor you get an experience, and
you will come out stronger.Again, theoretically so you said
it. We all know ittheoretically. I experienced one
full cycle of that, and I wasjust, like, hooked.

(22:47):
So So this is how it's gotta be.Yeah. Right?

Speaker 1 (22:50):
You built the confidence in action. You got
the result. You got thefeedback, and so it it sept into
the veins, then it becameembodied.

Speaker 2 (22:56):
It's like it's like when a little kid does something
good, and their parent, like,smiles big. Now I'm gonna play
soccer because that gets my dadexcited. Right? And now all of a
sudden, they're soccer fiendsfor the rest of their lives.
Yeah.
Those reinforcing mechanismsstill happen.

Speaker 1 (23:09):
So for someone listening who wants to apply it,
I love the way you frame this,like throw the hat over the wall
and go get it. If you were to,like, as tightly as possible,
describe sort of the steps ofthat process from noticing the
wall to deciding whether or notto throw, to owning the setbacks
or failures on the back end,what would that look like?

Speaker 2 (23:28):
Yeah. I think, honestly, it's hard to not
notice the walls because theycome up just there's just life
events. Do I try for a new job?Do I well, really, it's less of,
like, try for a job. It's like,do I take a job?
Maybe that's different or out ofmy field or whatever. Do I move?
Do I get in a relationship withsomebody? The big life events
are these walls. And it's whenopportunities come your way.

(23:50):
They're not infinite numbers ofthese, especially the really
formative ones. If I had said noto this project, my life would
be entirely different, entirelydifferent. It's wild. So say
yes. So say yes, you'll seethem.
So so throwing the hat over thewall is how you say yes. So it's
these big life moments. I justmoved. At this point in my life,
12, 15 years later, doesn't feelnearly as big. That's pretty big

(24:12):
to move with a 1 year old andstart in a new city.

Speaker 1 (24:14):
Yes, sir.

Speaker 2 (24:14):
Most of us are gonna, at some point in our life, are
going to have a version of that.Do I uproot and decamp and go?
And my thought to everybody issay yes at least once in your
life, if not often, to that moveto a new city for whatever
reason. Just because of whateverfor whatever reason. Right?
Move to a new city, take thatnew job, take that new project.

(24:36):
It might be like, Andrew, Idon't get, like, jobs all the
time. Someone asks you to runfor something. How about,
Skippy? When was the first timeyou ran for something?
It was probably one of those,like, universe opportunities,
and you said yes. Right?

Speaker 1 (24:47):
You know, it's interesting. Yes and no. The
first time I got asked to runfor something, I was recruited
by a nonprofit group. To run forState House. And I spent a lot
of time.
I left where I lived. I wentdown to Denver. I met the team.
I was there for a weekend. Iconsidered their pitch and
platform and all of that.

(25:08):
And I loved what they weredoing. I still love what they
do. The organization hasshifted, and they really do
amazing work on healing. Well,my words, healing or something,
that's not how they put it, but,from a much more, you know,
structural electoral and financeplace. I decided no.
But it was in the container ofthat cons intensive

(25:28):
consideration that I got toreally think about what I wanted
to run for and why, and that'swhere I made the decision. I do
wanna run, but not here. I wannarun locally.

Speaker 2 (25:38):
Everyone's gonna have a flavor of it. That sounds
awesome. Yeah. So the momentsare gonna happen. How do you
throw your head over the wall?
Like I said, like, is there anyway to just, like, say yes and
get out of the way so that yourother decisions kind of already
made for you? So here's thething. This might not work for
everybody, I'll admit, is thatI'm one of these people that is
much more driven by, call itexternal commitments. So if I

(26:00):
make a commitment to you, I'mgonna follow it up. Mhmm.
If I make a commitment tomyself, like I'm gonna wake up
every Saturday and go running,I'm not gonna follow it up. I'm
not gonna go running everySaturday. Mhmm. But I will make
this podcast. Mhmm.
Everything. So by saying yes toa friend and getting the hat
over the wall, that worked forme. Right? Mhmm. So I don't
know.
Whatever gets you committed,whatever makes you commit to

(26:22):
things, whatever you can notbear to break a whatever. Right?
Is it to yourself? Is it toother people? I think that's a
big deal.
And then life just happens andand then you kinda get to again,
my thought is if you can getover that activation hump, then
you just go with it for as longas you can ride it and just take
it where it goes. And now you'rein a new plane, new territory.
Right? And- Yeah. And again, 2things happen.

(26:44):
You either like get to a goodplace or it doesn't work and
your way further forward inlife. And by that, I mean,
you've learned, you've builtconnections, you've got that
experience. And again, just fromthat one experience of my life
between 20 and 20, maybewhatever, 21 and 24, you move up
so much faster in these moments.Yeah. And so, I don't know, you

(27:05):
can be in a crazy ride to thetop all your entire career in
life.
It's more likely that you gointo bursts where things are
kinda steady, but then anopportunity comes and you take
it and you, like, jump up andyou shift. Right? So at least
that's what I found.

Speaker 1 (27:17):
And so then on the other side of the wall, when you
come back and you're in theplace of owning any setbacks or
failures, and let's say you area person who is afraid of doing
that for whatever reason,totally get it. I've been there.
Yep. What thoughts do you haveon how to work with that fear
and continue to act inownership?

Speaker 2 (27:37):
So I think there's kind of the head and the heart
side of, like, owning yourfailures. Right? And so maybe
it's mostly heart and, like, theemotions of it, but the thing
that plays into that for me is amindset of, like, here's another
thing that I found works isbeing vulnerable. I found that
and again, I can caveat this,maybe it's because I'm a man and

(27:57):
men are usually not andtherefore I stand out by being
vulnerable. But by beingvulnerable and being willing to
both talk about the failure, buttalk even about the, like,
feeling of the failure or justthings like even one click
underneath the surface, it makesit all come to life.
And so somehow I got there. Iwasn't in therapy or anything at
the time, so I just got theremyself, right, being vulnerable

(28:19):
enough with myself to say it tomake it real. But I found that
even a lot of my career, I wason a call with some colleagues,
and actually, I was kind ofrecounting stories like this.
Actually, I wasn't recountingthis story. I was recounting
like day 1, the failure of beingan entrepreneur.
And I was calling, talking aboutit in some of this language, and
they were calling out like, oh,that's really vulnerable. I'm
like, yeah. That's kind of likethe only way I know how to

(28:40):
operate. I found much moresuccess in being like that than,
like, coloring over things.

Speaker 1 (28:47):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (28:47):
Maybe it's because I fail a lot. Maybe I, should, win
more. So I have less of thesestories, but, no. I think it's
part of life. If you make lifefailing forward a good thing,
there's nothing bad left.
There's

Speaker 1 (29:02):
nothing bad. There's nothing bad left?

Speaker 2 (29:03):
I don't know. Let's do whatever.

Speaker 1 (29:05):
If I think about my life, the times that I'm most
proud of that I would leastwanna give up were the times
where I was literally orfiguratively stuck in the mud
because they are always the onesthat have led to the greatest
growth. And the actual wins, itfeels like a little pin on the
military jacket. It's like, oh,that's nice.

Speaker 2 (29:24):
Right. I don't

Speaker 1 (29:24):
have any time thinking about it. Like, it's so
in the background.

Speaker 2 (29:27):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (29:27):
But it it's really the the failures that have
shaped me.

Speaker 2 (29:30):
The wins are like data points. They stack up in a
different way, but the lossesare just deeper and they're not
just data points or experiencesand they have feels. I'm
thinking about every chunk of mycareer has the, like, usually,
the win is in taking the leap,frankly. I'm just thinking about
different career jumps, and I'mlike, yeah. Each leap was there,
and then it's awesome, and thenit gets hard.

(29:53):
Mhmm. And then that's wherethings change and lead to the
next thing, which you don't knowif it's leap up, but you're at
least leaping. Then inhindsight, once you get some
space, those hard parts arelearning moments.

Speaker 1 (30:04):
Well, when you're talking about that, the vision I
got or the visualization I gotwas, like, the phase change of a
liquid. Right? Like, if you'rethe outside observer, you see
the moment where it freezes. Yousee the moment where the water
becomes gaseous, but all thework is done in between. When
from the outside, it looks kindaboring, but, like, that's when
all the interesting stuff'sreally happening internally.

Speaker 2 (30:24):
Totally. And I'll say, like, even internally, it's
happening, but I remember, like,a recent switch. When I left the
last job I had before startingmy real entrepreneurial career
at day 1, there was some, like,turmoil. It was tough. There was
a season that was hard, and itwas the beginning of the
pandemic, and there was lots ofchanges for a lot of different
businesses and organizations.

(30:44):
And so I was like, that was asucky time. And my learnings are
only, like, 12 months after thatof, like, oh, I probably
should've handled itdifferently. That's the reality
of when you apply this mindsetto life, the feedback loop is in
months, if not years. Yeah.Okay.
A 6 month tough season leads to6 months of starting a startup,

(31:05):
leads to 6 months of gettingthings going and feeling good
about it. Now I can look back 18months later and be like, oh, I
probably paid attention tothings that didn't matter. I
probably fought some fights thatI need to fight. I probably felt
some feels that I realized arecompletely unnecessary. I should
have been this, that, orwhatever.
And, actually, the reason I sayit like that is just because,

(31:27):
this thought process of bringingan entrepreneurial attitude to
your life. The idea that itdefinitely can and has for me
and probably is for everybody,manifests in these actual life
moves and moments. And thatmotion of this, this, here, I
don't know what's down the road.And that's true. You can't
predict the future.

(31:47):
So the only way to get there isto do the thing and see what
happens and then iterate. Mhmm.In real entrepreneurship,
especially if you can controlsome some variables, those
things can happen in, like, daysweeks. And the idea to put it
out there for everybody is to doit in a controlled enough
environment where you can evenmaybe test multiple things and
pick the one that works. Thatgenerally doesn't happen in

(32:07):
life.
You don't get to try out 3 jobsand pick the one that works to
take a job. And so really theultimate entrepreneurial
attitude is that leap. The leapwhere you learn as it happens
and after the fact, and then youincorporate it. And then once
you learn that, those motionsare generally always positive.
Either you win or you learn,means you take lots of leaps.

(32:30):
And then if you can get to thepoint where you do things in
parallel, not just in sequence,now you're learning, like, 10 x
faster than anybody. Yeah.Right?

Speaker 1 (32:39):
Yeah. I mean, it reminds me the analogy, and and
I think you're right in anunsupported environment. The
integration of learnings isslow. It could take months,
years, even decades, but likethe entrepreneurial development
journey, if you make theinvestment in whether it's
having coaching relationship orbeing part of a cohort or a

(33:02):
program like a day 1 or a startup weekend. But if you make that
investment for your personalgrowth, you can very much
accelerate that process throughthe daily and weekly evaluation
process and iteration thatyou're talking about in real
time.
And you can not shortcut themistakes, but you can shortcut

(33:26):
the reuptake of theunderstanding and the learning
from the mistakes in the sameway that you would in, like, a
weekend boot camp where youmight have the same idea for the
same company, but there's notsomeone there to push you, if
you don't have someone givingyou structure,

Speaker 2 (33:39):
if you

Speaker 1 (33:39):
don't have the accountability, you know, for
all the normal human reasons, itcould drag on for years.

Speaker 2 (33:45):
Yep. Yep. I mean, those boot camps, that concept,
it is, one, collapsing tons oftime into a short time. It's not
just that though. So let's say aproject is gonna take 48 hours.
You can either do it in 1weekend or you can do it over 1
month or 2 months or 5 months.Then you're right. There's the
accountability to push it. Youactually do more in 48 hours
than you would over a broaderamount of time because you have

(34:08):
all those things pushing you.Add onto that, now you've got
this condensation of people.
So again, if you spread it outover a long period of time, you
don't get those people andthat's some serendipity magic,
the molecules bouncing andcreating a Mhmm. An explosion.
And then on top of that,generally, everyone knows that
this, like, pressure cooker ishappening, so they bring
resources.

Speaker 1 (34:28):
Yes.

Speaker 2 (34:28):
And so they bring that knowledge and that
experience and those mentors andcoaches happen. So I don't know
what I'm saying here. It's justgo to more boot camps. It's a
really good recipe for movinglife forward, sprints, things
like that. I mean, that's why,again, like, entrepreneurs do
use the word sprint more thanthey should, And they try to use
it like we're technologyeverything's technology.

(34:49):
Right? But the day of a sprintis all those things together.
Right? We're gonna time boundthings, time box things. And
that just as a corollary, it'snot the principle of what we're
talking about.
It just takes all the essencesof what happens when
entrepreneurial mindsets andactivities are happening and
makes them happen. Takes awaysome of the variables, takes
away some of your ability to notfall off the wagon, but like

(35:10):
what happens when it's allspread out. Right? You don't get
the right people around you. Youdo kinda get a little lazy and
procrastinate.
Right? So, man, so much isgetting out of your own way.

Speaker 1 (35:20):
Very much so. Very much so. I mean, it reminds me
of a cohort we did maybe a yearand a half ago, that I was co
coaching through ELC, and we hada city council member from a
very small rural town inColorado. They came in with a
deeply dysfunctional council.They had no city manager.

(35:40):
They just fired him. There wasno one in leadership. They're
literally getting at fights atthe dais. People are sniping at
each other in the like, it's awhole thing. And not to say what
caused what, but because thisperson was in a container with
other elected officials within,I think it was like a 9 month
period.

(36:00):
This individual was able tolearn from the others in the
group, find tools, find his owncontribution, his own complicity
in the conditions that heclaimed not to want Mhmm. Shift
his behavior, begin to show upand support other leaders. And
within a year, they had a newcity manager they all like. They
were doing their first strategicplan since 94, their first

(36:22):
housing plan since. And, youknow, it's not to say that's a
direct thing, but to have thatregular iteration and
observation is what empowers oneto drive that change rather than
waiting 5 election cycles, forinstance.

Speaker 2 (36:37):
Yeah. Well, what you're bringing up for me, and
this is again, when I thinkabout bringing entrepreneurship
to other aspects of life,whether it's politics or raising
your kids or anything, the mainthing to grapple with, I mean,
I'm grappling with it, is how doyou take an iterative approach
to parts of life? Like we justsaid, like your career isn't as

(36:59):
I mean, it actually is veryiterative. Like, you can try
something and go there. Most ofus don't.
We kind of play it out as likeone long stretch. We don't
necessarily take feedback andand try the next thing. We don't
treat each unit as a experiment.Mhmm. And so that is again, if I
was to unpack, like, theentrepreneurial mindset, it's to
create everything around thatprinciple.

(37:20):
Everything in your mindset needsto be that I'm doing something,
it's experiments. Mindset has tobe, I've created a runway. I'm
meaning like I have time andcapital and energy to do
experiments. There's a sayingaround startups that like a
startup is not a company, it'snot a business. It is a
organization that is meant torun experiments and find some

(37:44):
truth about and the reason whystartups are that is because
startups are new businesses,proto businesses.
And if a business was alreadyexisting, you wouldn't need a
startup, right? So how do you gofrom no business to business
startup? And a startup isdiscovering a truth. Truth
generally about markets, aboutcustomers and products, and what

(38:06):
do customers need that theydon't have today that is better
than their alternatives. Andthat's the simple math of a
business.
Right? Can I create somethingbetter?

Speaker 1 (38:14):
Can you tell me if there's there maybe additional
the 2 primary perspectives forbusiness building or product
development. Now, of course,there's every gray in between.
Yeah. Yeah. But there's whatyou're talking about, which is
really applying the scientificmethod

Speaker 2 (38:28):
Yes.

Speaker 1 (38:29):
Of hypothesis, test, feedback, not success or
failure, just feedback, and theniterating based on that and
doing it as quickly as possible.And this is certainly made
famous by Facebook, move fastand break things. Yeah. Right?
Yep.
Yep. But works in a lot ofplaces. In in many ways, it's
analogous to how AI writes yoursentences very quickly. It's the

(38:50):
same process. On the other hand,there's the Henry Ford Model T,
right,

Speaker 2 (38:54):
which

Speaker 1 (38:54):
is if I ask people what kind of vehicle they
wanted, they would have said afaster horse. I have to show
them the thing that they wantfirst, and maybe put Steve Jobs
in this camp Mhmm. As well. AndI think that, you know, there's
always room for both in thepublic policy space. Let's just
say in policy making.
It doesn't have to be from anelected body. It could be

(39:15):
administrative work. It could beschool boards, etcetera.

Speaker 2 (39:19):
Right.

Speaker 1 (39:19):
I think many people, and I've been guilty of this as
well, fall into a victimmentality of, well, I'm only one
of X. I'm not the decisionmaker. I don't get to decide.
And so I might agree that takinga more experimental approach to
policy making, where we'retesting things, where we're

(39:41):
working with humans and I'mgoing to come back to human
centered design and some ofthese things in a second, but I
might think that's a great idea.In fact, I did think that was a
great idea.
I think I fell into this oflike, I want to do that and I
would try to push for it, say atthe council table or with staff.
People would not get it. Theywould not want to lose control.
They would have some pushbackand then I would go, oh, well,

(40:03):
we can't do it. And what I'mrealizing listening to you is I
didn't chunk it small enough.
Yes. That my job was not to makethe whole system bend to this
new system. It could have beento start implementing it in my
own life. Like, what if I hadchunked it down to 5 minute
conversations with citizens onthe street corner to start

(40:26):
getting feedback of what theythought about it? Yeah.
Or testing out individual ideasof, like, what would you think
about adding a trampoline to thegymnastics?

Speaker 2 (40:35):
That's an experiment. That's a test. Yep. Yep.
Chunking it down, what youimplicitly mean by chucking it
down is you're taking the riskof failure.
So when you ask somebody, whatdo you think about adding a
trampoline? And they go, you'rean idiot. The risk of that and
being negative and a failure islike nothing. So why not just go
do it? So mentally, we spent thefirst whole chunk of this

(40:59):
conversation being when you dobig things in life, there's no
real risk of failure, just go dothem.
Mhmm. But we know in practice,there's a plenty of things that
we just know it. Like you couldjust probably look at your
weekly workflow that if you dothings, there's some risk of
failure. If you do the wrongthing, you're gonna fail. Yes.
That is kinda true in mostbusiness and everything,
organizational, political,everything bureaucratic

(41:21):
environments. There's plenty ofthings that do not have room for
failure. So as a leader, as anentrepreneur, you have to chunk
it down such that if the failurehappens, you either learn or you
go forward. And again, now I'mjust reframing failure as learn
or go forward in a way thatdoesn't kill you. So, yes.
Yes. And when I was describingit for a business, right, so a

(41:42):
startups again, this might notbe here nor there for the
audience, but like when you'resetting up a startup, the main
thing you need to do is set itup so that the number of
experiments you run, none ofthem kill you. If you run an
experiment that's 5 months longand you only have 5 months of
capital, and afterwards you haveto put the startup to the side
and go get a job, failure willkill you. You've literally set

(42:04):
yourself up to be very fragile.If this experiment doesn't work,
I'm gonna have to go get a joband leave this business behind.
That's not a good experiment.Those experiments should be 5
days. Mhmm. Where if the firstone fails, you learned and now
you try the next thing. Now youhave 10 of them.
And if you run 10 experimentssequentially, are you way more
likely to get it right than 1over 5 months? Yes. Every single

(42:24):
time.

Speaker 1 (42:25):
Okay.

Speaker 2 (42:25):
How do you chunk these down in the political
world? That's a great thoughtprocess.

Speaker 1 (42:29):
I wanna kinda async back memento style to just add
in some concepts that people maynot be familiar with. Sure. That
I think can inform theirunderstanding of how to use
that. And so you, both as astudent, as an employee, as a
professor, in and around theworld of design thinking Yeah.

(42:50):
And design strategy.
Yeah. So can you talk about whatis design thinking and just
start to lay out some of thebasic foundations of this?

Speaker 2 (42:57):
Totally. Totally. So this was the driver, this
theory, that's not even theory,I don't even know what you would
call this, Practice, designthinking. Kinda got like a big
d, big d proper noun sort ofthing. I did go to school for
it, became this practice that Iwas implementing as a
consultant.
I kept teaching. It's very muchthis if you look it up, it'll

(43:17):
become a thing. Right? So designthinking at its very core to say
it almost stupidly is thinkinglike a designer. But what does
that mean?
A designer goes all the way backto there's a company called
IDEO. Mhmm. Very, very, verycool for anyone in the design
world, design firm that is 50plus years old. And in the

(43:37):
eighties and this is there'sactually probably some
precedents earlier than this.

Speaker 1 (43:41):
They used to have their annual summits in Aspen.

Speaker 2 (43:43):
Oh, really?

Speaker 1 (43:44):
I think so.

Speaker 2 (43:44):
I mean, they're really cool, so it doesn't
surprise me. But in the 70s 80s,the small version of this
company popularized this thoughtwhich was, Hey, we're designers,
we create chairs, we createthings. But we're not just
creating things to befunctional, to work
technologically, we're creatingthings that fit into their
broader environment. They workfor the human. So there's

(44:05):
another side of design thinking,it's also called human centered
design, And it basically says,I'm not gonna just design
something for the businessmodel, so it makes money, or
design something so it works forthe functional specs.
Those two things are important.It has to work, it has to make
money, at least in business. Butlet's design for the human, and
let's take the human as theyare. Let's not, like, presuppose

(44:26):
that they're this, like,homoeconomicist robot. Mhmm.
But, like, let's just presupposethat they, like, have quirks and
they sit in chairs weirdly andthey, whatever, do all these
things.

Speaker 1 (44:36):
Talking about. I always podcast them. I know.
Right?

Speaker 2 (44:39):
So the principle is take people as they are and
design for them, whether it's achair, a mouse, or a business,
or a product or service,something esoteric. Right? So
that has application everywhere.

Speaker 1 (44:51):
I watched I think it was a TED talk. I could be
incorrect about this. If we canfind it for the show notes, we
will. But it was about the useof human centered design in
building of affordable housing,and I think it was in Brazil, I
wanna say, and they took thisapproach of inviting the
community into design and theyended up with some very

(45:11):
unexpected outcomes, whichincluded houses that were
partially finished. And that wasa way that they could allow for
more people to be served,because people said, hey, we
want our whole community to beserved, and it shouldn't just be
about me.
And what might have beenconsidered imperfect to the
government, but actually allowedthe citizen over time to expand

(45:33):
and to personalize in a way thatthey found beneficial. And so
they're able to do, like, waymore with less faster.

Speaker 2 (45:39):
Absolutely. I mean, what happens is you get these
surprising outcomes. Right? Soif you ever have a top down,
this is what it must be, whetherit's a building code or laws
generally are like that. This iswhat it must be for everybody.
But if you let something come uporganically and you design
either with or for people in acommunity, you do get all these
surprising things. And to tiesome things together, you really

(46:01):
do need to have this humble,empathetic mindset. Like, you're
the one in control of theoutputs. You're gonna create
this thing. You're the designer.
You're God. Mhmm. But, no, youdon't know better than the user.
Mhmm. You have to put yourselfunderneath, behind, in service
of the user Beginner's mind.
To say, like, how do you needthis? You might be, like, a
house needs 4 walls, and theygo, actually, I would rather

(46:22):
have 10 houses with 3 walls thanthe opposite. Right. And, like,
if if that's true, and again,maybe understand why they want
that, and then maybe there'sanother another workaround where
it's like, okay. Well, it'sactually untenable structurally
to create 3 sided houses.
So what if we make them withthinner walls? Because we
thought you needed this. Again,it's all these, like,
preconceived notions of what youthink somebody needs, wants, and

(46:46):
how they operate, how they work,and just recognizing that you
don't know them. You wanna learnit from them directly. And so
there's so many really, reallypowerful tenets to this set of
practices.
So one is this empathy. Empathyfor the user, customer,
constituent, whomever. 2nd isthis iterative mindset. So one
of the major overlaps betweendesign thinking as a locus of

(47:07):
practice and entrepreneurship,and I've kind of I'll say I'm
kind of practitioners of both,is the idea of experimentation
and iteration. So you hearsomething from a user, a
constituent, a customer, andthey say, I want this.
It's your job to go back andsay, how can I deliver that and
meet all my other requirements?Maybe there's a budget
requirement. So again, let'sjust play this out as a

(47:27):
politician. Right? You hearthings.
You say, I need to answer whatthey want, but I also have to
get a bunch of other people tosay yes. Gotta rally the troops
and get the votes. I have to doit in a budgety thing. Right? So
I have to get creative.
Creativity is just matching allthose constraints and figuring
out the answer. Mhmm. But youjust can't leave that leg of the
stool. You can't just can'tignore the customer, the user,

(47:48):
the constituent. But to closethe loop here, the idea that I
hear this thing, I try thisthing out, it's maybe a novel
interesting idea.
Maybe I am gonna try somethingwild. You put it in play, and
they come back and say, no. Yougot it wrong. Well, tell me what
I got wrong. You're using itnow.
It's not working as you thoughtit was. What's the answer? And
then going again. Mhmm. So whenyou bring those two things

(48:09):
together, it's a littledangerous to say I'm gonna
listen so much to the customerthat I'm gonna get it right.
I think that's both like you gotthe empathy, but you've got a
little too much of I'm gonna getit right. That's not gonna
happen. So you have to haveempathy, and then you gotta
build it, and then you gottadeploy it, and then you gotta
see and then you do it again. Soyou really never get away from

(48:30):
the experimental mindset. That'sa definitely a part of design
thinking as well in the practiceand the principles.
Design thinking as much asentrepreneurship, maybe more so
is very applicable to publicservice. I would say
entrepreneurship has a littleless I'll come back to your
point of Steve Jobs and HenryFord, that side of

(48:50):
entrepreneurship where it'slike, I'm gonna kinda tell the
user what they want. It'sactually more at odds to design
thinking than the experimentalside. It it's the outlier. It's
definitely the outlier.
There's definitely politicalexamples. Right? Like, you
definitely want a leader. Youdon't want, like, Martin Luther
King did not, like, ABC test hisspeeches. Actually, maybe he
did.
Maybe he did.

Speaker 1 (49:09):
To say. I think I think he stopped. Did. Right? I
have a dream speech was notwritten on the paper.
It was a riff, or at least the Ihave a dream part of it was a
riff.

Speaker 2 (49:18):
Sam Seaborne, ABC tested his speeches. Right? Does
a real came out of the cavemovement leader. To somebody
who's, like, building a movementand, like, rallying a leader
leader, are they ABC testingtheir messages? Probably, maybe.
So there is definitely a placefor, like, outlier. I don't know
what you even call these folks,but it's not really
entrepreneurship, frankly. Mhmm.It's kind of like a movement.

(49:41):
It's kind of like borderlineculty, to say it both negatively
and positively.
Right? Like, you're justbringing people along. And
again, this is a littletheoretical, but like let's say
you were gonna try to like builda new movement around x, y, or
z, I don't know. And you got notakers, you'd have to iterate.

(50:02):
And if you believed it so badly,but no one else believed it,
you'd be the crazy person on thestreet corner.
And that's what happened. So ifyou wanna have impact, you both
have to believe something, andyou have to understand what
others believe. I don't know.Flip flopping actually is not a
bad thing to me. It just meansyou're trying stuff and you're
listening.
So the fact that, like, we dinga politician for flip flopping

(50:23):
is a little sad because it justmeans they're trying stuff and
learning.

Speaker 1 (50:26):
Well, self defeating. For sure. Okay. So understood
this sort of iterative,empathetic, experiential

Speaker 2 (50:33):
Right.

Speaker 1 (50:33):
Collectivist process where the designer is not the
decision maker and thearchitect, but is really the
facilitator, the ombudsman, andthe servant.

Speaker 2 (50:46):
That's the way to say it. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely.

Speaker 1 (50:49):
I actually have experience with this. Towards
the end of my time in office, Iwas pursuing some mental health
work community. I came from 4times the national suicide rate.
I had, through some friends,veterans and otherwise, mostly
veterans, become aware of someof the breakthroughs with
psychedelic mental health work,and I was interested in bringing

(51:12):
that in as an opportunity in thetherapeutic environment for my
community. And no surprise, sopart of this was forced, but no
surprise the political apparatusdidn't want to touch it with a
10 foot pole, because it was newand weird and out there and
risky and all the things thatmost institutions don't enjoy.
And so ultimately, what we do,for being honest, is punted it.

Speaker 2 (51:36):
Right? Mhmm.

Speaker 1 (51:37):
Said, oh, let's just let the citizens handle this.
Mhmm. And instead of kindaputting the tail between the
legs and leaving, we chose to doexactly that. And I made a
choice personally really earlyon that I wasn't going to lead
the process that I was going tohelp create the conditions for
the community to do what wasasked to like really let the

(51:58):
community lead. And so my rolewas like, get the space, send
out the invites, help coordinateagendas, bring in experts, bring
in policy experts, etcetera, butreally let the community lead.
And to your point, it ended upsomewhere that I would have
never imagined

Speaker 2 (52:16):
Mhmm.

Speaker 1 (52:17):
That for many times I thought, oh, this has gone off
the rails. It's never going tohappen. It's taking forever. And
it ended up in a place that wasfar more successful than I could
have possibly imagined. And ithelped a number of the people,
the citizens who showed up forthat are now really important,
empowered, well funded communityleaders in the space, which
would never have happened if itwas a government.

Speaker 2 (52:39):
Right. Yeah. Yeah. One of the things that I think
entrepreneurship forces one tothink about, here's what it is.
So growing up in life, you're inschool.
School has almost all of ourschooling has a very set input
output, study, get a good grade.There's one answer. There's no
iteration in school, frankly,all the way through. And people

(52:59):
get really good at just winningtests and does not create an
entrepreneur. Then you go get ajob and most fields also have a
way to win, consulting, banking,just any corporate job.
99% of American life does notset you up for any of these
things. So that's why it'sactually pretty novel, right?

Speaker 1 (53:17):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (53:17):
But the reality is what entrepreneurship forces you
to face and then so doespolitics is that just because
you have an idea doesn't matter.What matters is do other people
like that idea? Are they willingto put their money or their
support or whatever is valuableon the line? Are they willing to
pay you for your product orservice? Are they willing to

(53:38):
vote for you?
Are they willing to rally aroundyou? So you realize that you're
a facilitator. You realize thatyour ideas are whatever, not
precious. It's what other peopletake and uptake. Mhmm.
So eventually, you learn if mything's not getting uptaken,
whether it's by my colleaguesfor votes, whether it's by the
constituents, whether it's bythe customers, again, you're not

(54:00):
flip flopping. You're just goingwhere people want things.
Frankly, it's the free market inaction. Let people say I want
these things, whether it'sdemocratically or in the free
market. And things got off railswhen, like, top down whatevers
get to truly decide.
No. You're all gonna have breadof this kind. Right? It's not
gonna create a very

Speaker 1 (54:18):
good society. Right? Yeah. Author authoritarian
regimes of all stripes and, sizehave not gone well. The results
are in, folks.

Speaker 2 (54:28):
And and entrepreneurship is kind of the
opposite of that. It's literallylet the cards lie. And that's
why businesses go out ofbusiness because either tastes
change or, frankly, my businesswent out of business because you
build something that's notsustainable. Not enough people
want it. Not enough people wantit enough to pay you enough for
it.

Speaker 1 (54:46):
So Alright. We're gonna come into that. But before
we do it, let's jump into yourmost recent failing forward at
day 1. And I mean, first, maybejust describe what day 1 was.
And it was a number of thingsover the years.
We don't have to get into allthe details and stretch it out,
but help us understand what youbuilt, and then maybe some of

(55:08):
the more exciting moments whereyou just felt on fire and this
was shooting to stars, and thenwhat it felt like to yeah, move
through that not materializingin the way that your excited
mind may have projected.

Speaker 2 (55:22):
Totally and totally. So just a tiny bit more context,
the run up. So I launched day 1in the spring to summer of 2020,
which was right when thepandemic was getting going,
2020. And it was my first fullon entrepreneurial it was my
first startup. I've done otherplenty of entrepreneurial things
like in Uganda and some otherprojects here and there.

(55:44):
This was the first time I, like,made a go of it. It's like my
day job is gonna be thisbusiness. I'm gonna bring in
partners, outside capital, thewhole 9 yards. Leading up to
that, I had spent time in theworld of venture capital and so
I had a very front row seat tothat journey. So again,
entrepreneurship, designthinking led to entrepreneurship
for me.
I was in the passenger seat of alot of startups, very early

(56:06):
stage startups. I felt the chipon my shoulder to jump in myself
and have the driver's seatexperience.

Speaker 1 (56:11):
Well, I mean, in in some ways at Accenture, correct
me if I'm wrong, you were sortof the hired gun design thinker
that was brought in as a, like,very intensive day 1 program in
a single human body suit to helpcompanies grow or

Speaker 2 (56:25):
others? Well, I'm thinking about I'm I'm
referencing the thing I didbetween Accenture

Speaker 1 (56:28):
Oh, okay.

Speaker 2 (56:29):
Day 1. So that is very fair for for when you're a
consultant, you're embodyingthis new way of thinking, trying
to get an organization there.That's, like, two levels
removed. I was at this venturestudio, venture capital firm
called Human Ventures, where Iwas one level removed. I was as
close as you can get withoutbeing in the game.
And then day 1, I was in thegame. So that was my 3 or 4

(56:52):
years that you stopped turning.

Speaker 1 (56:54):
Campaign volunteer to campaign staff to candidate.

Speaker 2 (56:57):
Essentially. And candidate is like being a donor.

Speaker 1 (56:59):
By the way.

Speaker 2 (56:59):
Yeah. They're

Speaker 1 (57:00):
all very different, it turns out.

Speaker 2 (57:01):
Exactly. And you kinda think it's an upward drop.
You're, like, getting closer tothe glory, but, it's kinda not
very glorious to be thecandidate, to be the Absolutely
glorious. It's it's tough. It'stough.
So the reason I say that isbecause I had been in this
environment where I was aroundand supporting and building
startups with entrepreneurs. Day1, my startup was also a place

(57:22):
where I was around andsupporting and building startups
with entrepreneurs, but in justa different way. And so the way
was to build more of a, onevirtual during the pandemic,
when everything went remote andeverything, everyone left
cities, so you needed to beonline to see anybody and we
obviously were quarantininganyway. So there was a year and
a half or so of tailwinds whereremote was everything. And there

(57:42):
was like Zoom blew up, dozens ofcompanies got huge in, like, a
year just because of thepandemic.
We kind of got those tailwinds.We were also creating a
community that had one parteducation, one part support. The
thinking that at the time, weweren't the only ones doing this
kind of thing, and everyone whowas doing it was kind of all
playing into like a new kind ofuniversity. You don't need to go

(58:05):
to a university to learnanymore. That's kind of not what
universities, like, at leastprimarily are for.
They're for the people you meetAnd the guy container, like a
boot camp, but in a bigger way.Right?

Speaker 1 (58:16):
It's not

Speaker 2 (58:16):
just 2 days of a weekend. It's 2 to 4 years of
your life, and you do a bigthing in that compressed time
frame. Right? And so why doesthat have to be 100 of 1,000 of
dollars and only for 18 to 22year olds? So net, the business
was to create a new kind ofplace for that.
And there was a few of us doingit. We all kind of had our
little flavors of how to dothis, but we were creating these

(58:38):
new places, new environments,virtual, one part learning, one
part community, one part supportand mentorship and coaching for
entrepreneurs. So that's whatday 1 was. And this idea of a
cohort also kind of came out ofthat time period where instead
of this being just like a freefor all, you you have a class,
where you have people that aregoing through a class, basically

(59:00):
a class. We called it a cohort.
It thought everything it wasmeant to denote something
different, but it really was setnumber of people for set number
of weeks going through a setnumber of sessions. Yeah. You
know, whether it's, you know,super structured or less
structured. But again, took thebenefits of like, you can't do a
4 year sprint, you can't even doit, you don't, can't do an
infinite sprint, so you can doan 8 week sprint. So all to say

(59:21):
we ran these kinds of programs.
We ran these programs for thebetter part of 3 years in
different varieties. Some wereas small as a dozen, some were
as big as over a 100 actually,we had one that was over a 100.
So we had everything in betweenin size, and this was us
experimenting. So that firstyear and a half, lots of
experiments, but we hadtailwinds. Things were going
well, things were going right.

(59:42):
Our team grew, we raised money.We got people like Gary
Vaynerchuk excited to join onBard as an investor. And then as
the pandemic ended and themarket sort of tipped over the
last 2 years, 22 and 23, thetailwinds became headwinds. The
markets tipping was a big deal.Sure.
People got laid off fromFacebook and got 12 months of

(01:00:02):
severance, and in 2021, that wasreally cool. And they started
startups, and they, like, didall this stuff. But in 2022, you
got laid off from Zoom becauseno longer is remote nearly as
big, and Mhmm. You're morefearful. So you're not spending
money and

Speaker 1 (01:00:18):
Almost like you started building day 1 in
America, and then 2 years later,you're building it in Uganda.

Speaker 2 (01:00:27):
It definitely felt like a different world. In some
ways, here's what's tough aboutit. The reason why that doesn't
always quite hold is becausethat would have been obvious
that this was different. And insome ways, it was obvious, the
headlines, the pundits startedtalking differently, but you
don't necessarily always feelit. You're like the frog in the
pot of water or whatever.
So that was a big learning.Again, this is like an

(01:00:49):
entrepreneurial learning. Idon't know if it plays over to
politics, but it pays to be veryattuned to these shifting wins,
and we did not necessarily alignour strategy. I don't know if
things would have necessarilybeen any different, but I know
we didn't nest didn't get thetiming. We got some timing
awesome, and then we got sometiming way wrong.

Speaker 1 (01:01:08):
I think here's how it tracks, and I'll give an
example. And it's regardless ofwhat you think about the policy
is not important here. But therewas, you know, ongoing multi
administration negotiations onthe continuation of the peace
process in the Middle East. Itlooks like Israel is getting
closer to Saudi Arabia, someother partners. Right.

(01:01:29):
Looks like there's gonna be abig breakthrough, and then
October 7th happens. And thenthere's the Gaza war that
follows that incursion intoIsrael, back into Gaza, and it's
like, the goals, the people,none of that's changed, but all
of a sudden, that falls apart.Right? Because the environment
around you has shifted.

Speaker 2 (01:01:48):
Yeah. And so, as an entrepreneur, you don't control
that nearly, and so you gottaplay the hands that's dealt and
you gotta Yeah. I mean, there'stons of lessons about every era
of entrepreneurs. I'm definitelypart of this pandemic era of
entrepreneurs. And there'sSkippy, you are too.
Or there's a lot of us.

Speaker 1 (01:02:06):
Right? We're doing it right now, baby.

Speaker 2 (01:02:08):
There's a dotcom bubble in 2,001. There's the
financial crisis era. We kindajust slipped through one of
those. It was crazy in its ownway. It's really hard to plan
for that.
You just kinda gotta take yourlump sometimes. And if you have

(01:02:32):
Again, if you don't know thedynamics of venture capital,
it's not win a little bit. It'slike go big or go home. Mhmm. In
the middle is actually no man'sland.
And so you shoot for go big andthat actually exposes you to go
home. And a lot of startups havegone home in a way that's kind
of part of the design of thesystem for good or for bad in a
very interesting way.

Speaker 1 (01:02:52):
And now a quick break from our sponsors, and we'll be
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(01:03:13):
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and starting today. That'swww.electedleaderscollective.com
and starting today. You justsaid something that makes me

(01:05:47):
wanna ask you 3 separate thingsat the same time that I can't
decide.

Speaker 2 (01:05:51):
Figure it out.

Speaker 1 (01:05:54):
But so you you helped me decide where to go with that
because I think it's there's somuch interesting, juicy stuff in
here. One, I'm curious aboutchasing the mirage that is set
by the most successfulentrepreneurs versus the reality
of the universe and where peopleland. B, I've heard you talk
about people chasing VC moneyand politicians sharing

(01:06:18):
something, which is those whodeserve it most want it least.

Speaker 2 (01:06:24):
Mhmm. Super real. Well, one thing I'll say just
about the bigger picture is thatI think we, my co founder and I,
when building day 1, we kindamade the right call at all the
right times. So in 2020, it wentin 2021 in particular, the smart
move was to swing because therewas so much momentum. So you
swing big.
That was the optimal strategy.If money's there, you take it.

(01:06:46):
Mhmm. Until it goes away and itbecomes an issue. Right?
So there's definitely caveatsand there's definitely, like,
wiser ways to go about it, butit's extremely tough and
borderline maybe not even thatsmart to not take things that
are there for you as long as youdon't let it take you to the
wrong spot. So that's the thingwhere it's very easy, and we
kinda did this was we took thething that was there, the right
move, but then we got a littleover our skis and things

(01:07:09):
shifted. So second time founderAndrew or maybe a more gray
haired founder would haveoperated similarly, but, like,
with some differences.

Speaker 1 (01:07:18):
A little more risk mitigation.

Speaker 2 (01:07:19):
Again, I'm now 35, smack dab in the middle of my
career. And I feel like, youknow that curve that says the
people who, like, don't know asmuch are the most confident?

Speaker 1 (01:07:29):
Yes.

Speaker 2 (01:07:29):
I'm like on the downward trend where I'm like,
I've now learned enough to knowI don't know anything because
I've been hit in some seriousways. And it started when I was
22. I didn't know anything, andI just failed. And it took,
like, 8 of those until 35 for meto start to be like, maybe I
don't know everything. Maybe I'mactually dumber than I than I
project.

(01:07:50):
And and 1, everyone listening,you're somewhere on that curve.
Let's be serious. And 2, thefaster you can get over the hump
to realize what you don't know,you're gonna make better
decisions. But to the point of,like, the people who get VC are
the ones who need it the least,1000,000%. I have this vast new
appreciation for multi multitime founders because they've

(01:08:11):
learned things through theringer that no one knows until
you've gone through it.
And if you've stayed in thegame, like, multiple times and
gotten punched whether you win,lose, or or draw, it says
something. So, like, multi timefounders should get second looks
and more attention. They arelegit. It is legit. And, again,

(01:08:32):
as a first time founder, Ichafed against that.
I was like, why are these otherpeople getting such a leg up in,
like, fundraising? And there's100 of 1000 of first time
founders who are all trying tobreak in, and we're all salty.
We're all salty about the natureof the game. And I'm telling
you, as I'm, like, one step pastthat, the game is the game for a
reason because 2nd time foundershave earned major, major wisdom.

Speaker 1 (01:08:55):
Now having worked with thousands of founders Yeah.
In some way or another, manyfirst timers. Yeah. What are
some of the most commonmisunderstandings that first
time founders hold?

Speaker 2 (01:09:08):
I think that first time founders get too creative.
Mhmm. Some of the 2nd timefounders that I've worked with
more recently are building very,very clearly understandable
things that are actually franklyway less creative than the first
time founders building the nextwhizbang AI for whatever. And

(01:09:30):
it's like, it's because they'renot solving brand new emergent
things. They're solving for,like, problems that have been
problems for 20 years.
Mhmm. Really boring parts of bigbusinesses. And so that's a
little inside baseball. Andagain, this is a little bit I
got I'm, like, getting grayhairs, and it's like I have
appreciation for folks who havedeep experience because I'm,
like, only by being, like, a 50,60 year old person who's lived

(01:09:54):
inside of an organization, likea big, big Texaco or something,
you know, some, like, bigcompany for 30 years and knows
where the problems are, thatperson actually knows where to,
like, really build. I knowFacebook was made by, like, a
college kid, Mark Zuckerberg.
What mistakes do first time andsecond time founders do
differently? So I think they gofor the wrong ideas. They they

(01:10:17):
go for ideas that are not real,too clever, versus ideas that
are just simple, gonna makemoney, etcetera.

Speaker 1 (01:10:24):
What other misunderstandings do first time
founders tend to have orcommonly held?

Speaker 2 (01:10:30):
1st time founders, and I know this because I don't
know what it feels like whenit's working. Mhmm. And so and
so here's the thing. By default,you don't know anything. You
don't know if it's working ornot working.
And then you star, and bydefault, it's not working.

Speaker 1 (01:10:44):
Right. Right. The airplane, the airplane is not
flying itself.

Speaker 2 (01:10:47):
Yeah. By default, you are not getting customers. 1st
time founders, 1, they don'tknow what it's like to feel the
opposite. So in some ways, theyare like that frog in the pod
and it's boiling because they'relike, it's not working. They
don't know the alternative.
They don't know how dangerous itis to be where they are. And so
that's why you see lots of firsttime founders play a business

(01:11:09):
out, like, we almost did, right,for 2, 3 years and it's not
quite working. It's because theykind of maybe think it's working
or it's worked a little bit andthey've taken that little bit,
but there is this qualitative,just draw a line, not working
and working. Working meaningit's gonna go, and it's gonna
pay your bills. It's gonna growinto a lot of people.

(01:11:30):
It's gonna serve a lot ofpeople. It's gonna do all the
things. Not working iseverything else. It doesn't
matter if you have a lot ofpeople or even a lot of
customers, but if you'remortgaging your life, any way
you're burning money. Right?
That's business. If you're notmaking money, you're losing
money. So it's that sentiment ofthis is what it looks like to be
building something that peoplewant in a way that's gonna,

(01:11:50):
like, be a real business. It'shard to really add a ton more to
that because it's a feeling.Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:11:56):
I mean, it's like being a race car driver. Right?
Until you can drive by feel, youcan't really drive.

Speaker 2 (01:12:02):
Totally. Totally. And so I see a lot of first time
founders almost playing at it,and I'm like, see them still
building their business from,like, 4 years ago, and I'm like,
you're not really building that,are you? Because it would have
either won or lost by now.Right?
Yeah. Actually, I say that, andthat's a little disingenuous
because, like, maybe it is avery slow success. Here's the

(01:12:22):
thing. Actually, here's thething. I'm about to say, like,
oh, yeah.
There's definitely room forthese, like, long that's
survivorship bias. Because I canname for you 5 companies that
took 10 years to succeed, Butdang, in the 10 years it took
those 5 to succeed, 5,000,000went under. So do not anchor on
the 5 that went big. You'regonna be one of the 5,000,000.

Speaker 1 (01:12:43):
I think this is such an interesting point, and I've
heard it said I wish I knew whatthe attribution was because I
think this is great. I don't.But if you're out there, please
take it. And I bring it back tothis because we're focused on
the mental well-being ofleaders, not just the outward
success. But I've heard it saidthat happiness or contentment

(01:13:04):
equals reality minusexpectations.

Speaker 2 (01:13:07):
Mhmm.

Speaker 1 (01:13:08):
And I think we so frequently misattribute reality
to what we see in the news,which isn't to say what we see
in the news isn't reality. Butto your point, it is a very,
very, very narrow sliver ofquote, unquote, newsworthy, aka
attention worthy selection biasof the scope of reality. And,

(01:13:32):
yeah, I was listening to, TimFerriss show a couple weeks ago,
and he was talking about this interms of physical fitness. It's
like if you were sitting aroundwatching the Super Bowl and you
thought, oh, man. I put on acouple pounds.
I haven't worked out in, like, 6years. I really need to get back
to the gym. It would be a reallypoor strategy to, like, look up
from your bowl of nachos at theTV and be like, oh, Patrick

(01:13:54):
Mahomes. Yeah. He's he's inpretty good shape.
I should do I should be likethat. I'm gonna go be like
Patrick Mahomes. And that is inthe political world, in the
professional world, in theentrepreneurship world. I think
what most of us do most of thetime is assume companies are all
$1,000,000,000. They happen in 6months.

(01:14:15):
Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:14:15):
Like Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:14:16):
What's the reality? If we were to dispel the mirage
and yield the reality such thatpeople do not subtract an
expectation denominator higherthan their numerator?

Speaker 2 (01:14:28):
Yeah. Yeah. I have a few thoughts. One is the odds
are, to a high degree, that,like, you are the average.
Because what you see is, like,orders of magnitude further
removed from you.
Right? So we're looking at abell curve. You see this little
tiny edge. Anyone who makes itto Shark Tank, makes it on
whatever, the TV for goodlooking whatever shows, being a

(01:14:50):
celebrity, that's the tippy tipedge. Whether you're a little
bit to the right or a little bitto the left of the standard
deviation of the mean, everyoneis way more like you than not,
and that's for entrepreneurshipand for, like, weight, you know,
and fitness.
So that's interesting. If youhappen to get a look at the
world, you'd almost certainlysay, like, oh, I'm okay. I'm a
little overweight, a littleunderweight. I'm a little and

(01:15:11):
you'd be like, I'm fine. Youwouldn't feel the difference.
Mhmm. I don't know if that doesanything for you, but it kinda
makes everyone probably stayback. The one positive thing of
seeing all these superstars ismaybe I wanna be like that.
Like, I shoot for the stars, butwe know that that gets
misinterpreted.

Speaker 1 (01:15:26):
Yeah. We all have agency to expand or contract our
envelope of possibility. Yeah.Whether that's the likelihood
we're gonna get cancer or howbig our bicep is or whatever,
but we exist within parametersthat are set in some way by
nature. Yeah.
And so when we're comparingourselves to people who not only
have had the best training inthe known world in the history

(01:15:49):
of man, but are also probablyjust genetic freaks Yeah. Right.
We set ourselves up for failure.And so what I'm hearing from you
is, like, even if you're not inthe middle of the bell curve,
statistically, that's the mostlikely outcome, but maybe you're
not. But what if you were, andwhat if you thought through what
you would do if you were fromnot a surrender position of, oh,

(01:16:12):
this is a reason not to proceed,but from an empowered position
of what can I do to bend my ownbell curve the most?

Speaker 2 (01:16:20):
That's where I was gonna go. So one, recognize
you're on 1 or 2 sides of thestandard of the middle. And then
2 Standard. The the solution thethe action plan anywhere further
forward, again, not even to thetop because whatever, is not to
copy what those people didbecause it's not realistic. It's
not even real.
It's not even steps. So let'ssay I'm gonna give you
entrepreneurship lessons. Let'ssay there's a parallel for how

(01:16:43):
to have fitness lessons. Theproblem is, and this happens on
entrepreneurship and in fitness,is that the best way to break
through the noise and to sell abunch of courses or to get a lot
of people is to show thoseoutliers and to kinda like sell
the dream.

Speaker 1 (01:16:57):
That's right.

Speaker 2 (01:16:57):
We just all have to recognize this is where, like,
information like, Internetliteracy. We all have to
recognize we live in a worldwhere all the incentives are to
lie about the path. Because if Itold you what it took, it'd be
boring and lame and would notbreak through and be sexy.
That's for fitness. That's forentrepreneurship.
Frankly, it's for mentalwell-being. Yes. And so we're

(01:17:20):
doing a version of that. We'rebasically saying like, it's not
sexy, but it's real and raw andhonest, and we're having fun
conversations about it. Andthese are the beginnings of the
tips and tricks, and it doesn'tlook like a 20 step plan.
It doesn't look like anythinglike this.

Speaker 1 (01:17:31):
Let's ask, like, what are the realities of, let's say,
building a business? So if youlook at whether it's people that
have passed through day 1 orjust general stats that you're
aware of, of entrepreneurship ingeneral, things like what
percentage of companies succeed.When we think of success in
terms of, like, the lifestyle ofthe founder and income, Yeah.

(01:17:52):
What does that actually looklike? How long does it take?
Like, what's the what's, like,the real ground truth of what's
happening in the middle of thebell curve?

Speaker 2 (01:18:00):
Yeah. Most of the stats are around, like, 90% of
companies will fail in 5 years.I would say that's probably
directionally right. There'salso stats of like more people
are starting businesses now thanever. There's definitely more
accessibility and tools and theInternet is obviously not new,
but like we're definitelycontinually just pushing in
directions of like there's allsorts of reasons and abilities

(01:18:22):
to start.
Failure rate is still very high,and I think the way I con I
reckon I reckon with that, Ithink it's actually very natural
for most businesses to die inthe sense that markets are
shifting, tastes are shifting,you're, as an entrepreneur,
shifting, and so just becauseyou even have something that's
working for a minute, doesn'tmean it's gonna stay around. And
so that could be like a tireshop, that could be a new never

(01:18:45):
before seen thing, somethingdigital, something community
based, something software based,could be, like I said, like a
sweaty startup. That's a funterm of just doing, like, a
landscaping business. Right?Mhmm.
Landscaping businesses are asstandard as they come. If you
just try hard enough and put theeffort in, the odds are you're
gonna get somewhere. But theodds are you're also gonna die
in 5 years or so just becauseyou're gonna maybe move on or

(01:19:08):
I'm retired. Or whatever. So allthat to say, I do think
entrepreneurship just has thisidea of failure baked in.
I don't think we can avoid it.We shouldn't avoid it. And so
one, that takes me back to learnall you can. 2, the reality is
you stack up 2 or 3 failures andif you can set those failures
up, this goes way back to thebeginning of our conversation.
If you can do those 2 or 3entrepreneurial failures in a

(01:19:31):
way that doesn't kill you, in away that doesn't mortgage your
house, these are learningjourneys, you only need one win.
The stats are just really skewedbecause you're still part of the
90% of businesses that died, butultimately, you're getting
yourself as, like, a personinto, like, you're doing
something great for yourself andfor your family. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:19:48):
And so

Speaker 2 (01:19:48):
that's the promise of entrepreneurship. And what's
tough about that, again, justback to the idea of, like, you
see these, like, winners andthey only show the positive end
journey and don't always talkabout the middle, and even if
they told you this is how greatI am now and you can be here
too, Are the steps the same?Yeah. We're still wrestling with
the distance there. There'sreally not many straight lines

(01:20:08):
in entrepreneurship.

Speaker 1 (01:20:09):
Yeah. And it's incumbent upon and beneficial to
us as leaders to question ourown assumptions, our own
projections about people,because when they're incorrect,
they actually hurt us. So, justas an example, you know, Andrew,
you were in this camp for me.Now I'm not gonna say anything
that I'm about to say is untrue,but, wow, look at Andrew. He's

(01:20:30):
running this big company.
They've had tens of cohortsthrough. They've got this super
fancy social media guysupporting him. They're raising
1,000,000 of dollars. He's onpodcasts. He's on the TV.
Andrew's got it made. There'ssome little part of my mind
that's like looking at Andrew ona yacht, sipping back, like it's
a second yacht because the firstone broke down, and he's in my

(01:20:50):
orcas. And, you know, there's,like, supermodels that, like,
that runs through my head. And Ihave that with a number I've had
2 coaching sessions with 2people that in a similar kind of
position to where you are.Obviously, won't disclose who
they are, but run successfulorganizations that have, you
know, international acclaim andmembership.
They get to meet with thecoolest people around, like,

(01:21:13):
they all of that. And then youdrop in, and it's like, oh,
well, they have a house. They'relucky in that way, but they're
kind of just scraping by.They're not saving money. The
wife is upset because they justhad a kid and they don't know if
they can afford daycare.
They're working all the time tokeep the thing afloat. Is the
passion still? And it's like,woah. That mirage that I'm
basing my success off of, thatI'm benchmarking my success off

(01:21:36):
of is so not real.

Speaker 2 (01:21:39):
I completely resonate with that. Every business is a
shit show underneath the hood,whether they're succeeding or
not. Succeeding shit showsagain, it's an entire spectrum
of, like, rocketship has oneversion, going well, just over
the middle line, just under themiddle line, and then
everything. And this is thething, I did this, which is you

(01:22:00):
definitely paint the rosiestpicture you can on social media.
There is no incentive.
There's very little incentive.Everything I said before about
being vulnerable, Andrew,operates like that. But the
business, day 1, did not operatelike that. The business was not
vulnerable. The business waslike, we're killing it every
single time.
And of course, that rubs offmaybe on me a little bit, but,

(01:22:21):
like, yeah, every business isdoing that. Every single one.
Some are flat out lying straightup, the same way like Instagram
pictures are doctored. These arejust like fake. Some are just
like portraying only the goodstuff.
That's standard. So, yeah, it'sendemic. You really cannot base
anything, self worth, businessworth. You definitely shouldn't

(01:22:43):
base your your worth on yourbusiness as well. Let's let's to
get that on the table as wellbecause your businesses will
die.
Mhmm. And they're gonna go to 0,and you're gonna make way less
money than you made at your verystandard job.

Speaker 1 (01:22:53):
Yeah. And

Speaker 2 (01:22:54):
here's the thing. Don't know if you agree with
this, Skippy, which is I'vegotten to the point where I
think entrepreneurship as amindset and practice, kind of
like design thinking, is prettyvaluable for everybody. It's
pretty universal. Mhmm. Allthings equal, it'd be it's
better to be comfortable withfailure.
It's better to be comfortableand be experimental. It's better

(01:23:14):
to be empathetic to yourcustomers. But the real journey
of jumping into startup or evento start a small business is
definitely not for everybody.But it's hard to say that to
anyone's face because youprobably are gonna know that
after you've done 2 or 3 ofthese. Does that carry over to
politics, which is it'd be sogood if everybody was more

(01:23:35):
involved, if everybody cared alittle bit more about their
communities, if everybody was alittle more informed about the
issues and had opinions thatwere informed, but not nearly
everybody should run or activelyget involved in a way that's
beyond just participating.

Speaker 1 (01:23:49):
Does that align? Yeah. I mean, it's certainly a
100% aligns in that. What Ifound in my own life and in the
coaching practice is that reallythe biggest linchpin, the
greatest superpower is when yourecognize there are no bad
experiences in life. There areonly enjoyable experiences and
experiences you learn from.
And through repetition, throughthrough the power of reps and

(01:24:13):
survivorship bias, we must sayout the other side, you come to
recognize that your moments ofgreatest internal strife and
challenge are the moments thatbest served you in life, and
then you can switch into a placewhere in the moment, when you're
being challenged, not that itdoesn't hurt, but you actually
get a little bit excited aboutit. You recognize something's
coming. And when that switchflips, you're in a different

(01:24:35):
universe. And I experienced thatright in the middle of my last
term in office, where I wentfrom a place of what I would
have thought initially was likeempowered leadership and
whatever, but was really likekind of selfish victim mentality
into one that was really aboutfacilitating public good,
working with others, like seeingthe losses as just steps, just

(01:25:01):
stepping stones. So I think a100%, I agree with your
conclusion about the mindset.
I think that the political spaceor the lawmaking space would
benefit from more of designthinking, but it's different
than entrepreneurship. Becauselike you said, you get to chunk
things down to a place whereit's not going to kill you. But

(01:25:22):
in the public sphere, you'reoften thinking about real life
and death decisions, and notjust for you, but for 1,000 or
millions of people. Yeah. Youdon't have the same space to
take risks in many places.

Speaker 2 (01:25:33):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:25:33):
And so you have to be able to parse out where that
type of work is appropriate andwhere it's not. You wouldn't
wanna turn your well, maybe youwould. I don't know. I don't
wanna I assume you wouldn't wantto turn over your water
sanitation district, forinstance, to an iterative public
led process. I I could see thatgoing off the rails.

Speaker 2 (01:25:51):
Right. Right. Right. This again, I probably get
immediately hypothetical in thatsituation. Obviously, you
wouldn't let people vote ontechnical water things.
That's just silly.

Speaker 1 (01:26:02):
Well, increasingly, it's happening, and we don't
have to go down that road, butincreasingly, it's happening,
and I would argue the resultsaren't good.

Speaker 2 (01:26:10):
No. I mean, I wouldn't suggest it. I wouldn't
I wouldn't believe they'd begood either. My political
science background, my strongestheld belief is that I'm a big
fan of representativegovernment, which is Right.

Speaker 1 (01:26:19):
Pick your people

Speaker 2 (01:26:20):
and let them do their thing.

Speaker 1 (01:26:21):
Do the thing. Oh, and so that's getting back to your
second question was my point is,like, no. It's not for everyone
by design. It's designed to freeyou, Andrew, up to go build day
1. Yeah.
It's designed to free you,fictitious person named Sally.
You know?

Speaker 2 (01:26:35):
So there there is a parallel where almost by
definition, it's not designedfor everybody to be in the arena
running these things and to bevying the arena of ideas and and
and elections and such. But it'dbe great if everybody was a
participant and had somemindsets that were informed. And
then, yeah, I wish I don't thinkeveryone should be in the arena,

(01:26:55):
you know, mortgaging their houseto go start a startup. Right?
But everyone can be design ledand entrepreneurial.
And the end state of thatmindset of design thinking
entrepreneurship appliedanywhere is you shouldn't make
the water process at the, like,big level. Can you chunk it
down? Can you just try out? Canyou take 5 different solutions,

(01:27:18):
solvents, whatever you're andjust take water off to the side
so it's zero impact on anybodyand try the thing out? There is
always a way to try andexperiment on a thing.
Again, me kind of shitting onpolitics, there's a world where,
like, you you're gonna getfurther by being a diatribe for
your specific solution versus,hey, why don't we create a

(01:27:38):
little test bed, try out 5things in a way that nobody gets
hurt? It's like the clinicaltrial mindset. We're gonna
actually get to better outcomes.

Speaker 1 (01:27:46):
Or you could have a subset of people and ask them
what's most important

Speaker 2 (01:27:49):
to you in their

Speaker 1 (01:27:50):
order delivery. Right? Is it reliability? Is it
temperature? Is it purity?
Right? All of that.

Speaker 2 (01:27:57):
A test can be any see, that that's a fun thought
process. What are tests? So thathappens in entrepreneurship a
lot because it's it's a verynonstandard thought process for
somebody to even think inexperimentations. They don't.
They think in inputs andoutputs.
I do a thing and it has animpact. And so in lots of ways,
and this is a little bit of likethe craft of being an

(01:28:17):
entrepreneur, is thinking whatways can I experiment? What can
I try? And so just framing aconversation as an experiment is
really, really good. Go ask solet's think of all the ways you
can experiment.
Go ask different people, notjust the people that you maybe
get on the phone when you callthem, but go to different places
and get different people. Askthem different questions. They

(01:28:38):
might answer questionsdifferently. Show up with
something. Show up with a thing.
Show them 2 different things.Don't trust their answers. Make
them experience it. This is thething. I could, like, ideate
with anybody to be like, whatare you working on?
What legislation's on the table?What are the questions people
have? One side likes this, oneside doesn't like that. This is
the issue. I'm actually gonnatry to take all our shoes and

(01:28:59):
make them black and white.
Okay. So there's there'ssomething to be understood here.
So, I mean, standard thing islike, let's understand the other
side. That's I'm not even gonnatalk about that. It's more of,
what could we do to go getbetter data to show one is the
right way or the the wrong way?

Speaker 1 (01:29:15):
Yeah. It's so funny. So there's 2 things that are
coming to mind as like realworld application examples of
this in the policy space that Ithink might help illustrate for
someone like how to expand sortof the Overton window of like
where we could go with this. Sofollowing the water example,
anyone who's been to Paris inFrance will know that in

(01:29:36):
addition to regular waterfountains, there are carbonated
water fountains, which is thething that you think is I don't
think it happened in France, butit is delightful. It's joy.
I can't imagine a city hall inAmerica that comes up with that
solution. But I could imagine aexperimentally minded group of

(01:29:57):
staffers putting together aworking group and starting to
ask some leading questionsaround, what do you want from
your water and unearthing someunexpected results of, like, we
want to enjoy time with familyin a park. Oh, okay. Well, what
makes you really enjoy? I feltlunch does.
Oh, what are your favoritethings with lunch? And it's

(01:30:17):
like, oh, carbonated water.Mhmm. Oh, okay. Would have never
done that.
How much money would it cost todo that, at sort. Right? And so
you could see how Mhmm. Openingthe aperture to something that
would seem closed loop couldyield a result like that and
would ultimately result in morejoy from the citizenry that is
directly associated with thegovernment, which potentially

(01:30:41):
could then create a feedbackloop of trust. You could find
this cascading waterfall ofpositive effects from something
that you would have neverplanned.
And the second thought that camethrough is related to this
because I've heard you say whatyou control is inputs, but
you're judged on the outputs.Yeah. I've always loved that
quote from you. There was aproject, this is from memory,

(01:31:05):
the details aren't going to beprecise, but there was a major
rail project to increase thespeed of the high speed rail
going into London from some ofthe outlying areas. This project
took, you know, I don't know, 5,10, 15 years, 1,000,000,000 of
dollars, and ended up savingsomething like 7 to 11 minutes

(01:31:26):
off of the route.
And I was reading a book from aworld famous designer who said,
okay. Well, several$1,000,000,000 all this time,
you save 7 to 11 minutes. He'slike, you could have given me a
100th of that budget. I wouldhave put a beautiful coffee shop
on board, hired models to be theservers in the train, and people

(01:31:46):
would have asked me to spend 11more minutes on the train.

Speaker 2 (01:31:51):
The name was escaping me too. He's a prolific speaker
designer, and it's reframing. Imean, that's the ultimate side
of, like, human psychology. Yes.You've spent all this money to
make the time go faster becausethat's all you can think about,
but

Speaker 1 (01:32:06):
you're making a baseline assumption at moment 1
that the end goal is efficiencywithout ever really checking in
to see what people want. Maybethey just want more time to work
or with their kids. Maybe theywould have just loved WiFi, you
know, in the desk. There mayhave been so many other paths of
less resistance and betteroutcome for the citizenry if you

(01:32:29):
had just checked in earlier,asked the right questions, and
critically done it in the rightenvironment. And this is now me
editorializing, but askingpeople through a newspaper that
4% of citizens read

Speaker 2 (01:32:43):
Exactly.

Speaker 1 (01:32:43):
To come give public comment in a scary room filled
by cameras where they feel likethey're on trial and they've
done something wrong before theywalk in, is not going to
reliably source the audiencethat you seek, nor the openness
of opinion that you desire.Like, you have to cultivate the

(01:33:04):
environment if you want to haveauthentic and representative
response.

Speaker 2 (01:33:10):
You're right. There's design thinking in there, which
is, hey, let's get outside thebox. Let's change what the
question is we're even asking.What do you want in your rail
experience? And then, try thison.
There's There's some point inthe process where you have to
requisition money to doanything. What if the first
moment was instead ofrequisitioning anything, I'm
gonna requisition $25, which isdrops in the bucket. 2, take one

(01:33:33):
route and put 1 coffee shop withthese waitresses or waiters,
right, and try it out and thendo some surveys. That's an
experiment within the scope ofthings.

Speaker 1 (01:33:43):
Yes.

Speaker 2 (01:33:43):
Someone literally could have gone rogue. This is
what I think is fun. Could yougo rogue and do that? Could you
go rogue and just show up withboxes of Joe and just some good
looking friends and just belike, I'm gonna make this train
trip enjoyable and pass outcoffee.

Speaker 1 (01:33:58):
Put a little GoPro in the corner and smiling. Smiles
afterwards.

Speaker 2 (01:34:02):
So, like, if I was an entrepreneur again,
entrepreneurs are a little haveto be pirates because by
definition, they're creatingsomething new. They can be
pirates in most free markets,whereas in the government, it
might be a little harder. Butall that to say is the essence
of that is there have to bechunkable, testable things. That
if you could show that GoPro oryou could show those surveys,

(01:34:23):
you'd be like, let's go thisway. And again, like the idea
sounds good, data is better,straight up.
So if you can go close the loop,so you listen, idea, experiment,
data, now you roll it out andyou save $15,000,000,000,
whatever. That's good practice.

Speaker 1 (01:34:40):
Okay. So that's a perfect segue to something that
you're kind of famous for and Ithink is super applicable for
this audience, which is thisidea of customer discovery.

Speaker 2 (01:34:50):
Cool.

Speaker 1 (01:34:51):
You know, famously have a 100 conversations with a
100 people in a 100 days. Whatis customer discovery? Why
should we care about it? Howdoes it work?

Speaker 2 (01:35:00):
So you mentioned the version of it, a big piece of
it, which is, when you talk topeople getting in that
environment. But fundamentally,it's the idea of any startup,
any business. The firstfundamental mindset is your
ideas are, at best, guesses,hypotheses, if we're gonna be
scientific. And the answer liesin the market, the customer. And

(01:35:23):
so if you're not talking to themin a serious way and talking to
them is a bare minimum, Talkingto them in a structured in the
right way, which is what youdescribed.
Right? Not not in a scary way,but in a way that elicits real
information. And better thantalking to them, getting them to
experience things in a smallindicative way. Customer

(01:35:45):
discovery is learning from yourcustomers, the people that
ultimately matter, about whatthe truth is. The truth is about
this specific thing, meaningthis hypothesis, is it right or
wrong?
Frankly, this is the big thingwe haven't talked about, before
you go jump in and outlay$15,000,000,000 before you go in
and outlay your mortgage yourhouse, before you go and outlay

(01:36:07):
3 years of your life. Soactually that's a big, big, big
thing. So why do customerdiscovery, frankly? And why do
design thinking? Why do anythingexperimental?
It's because we have scarceresources. $15,000,000,000 for a
train, 5 years of your life,your house, all these things
that you would have to put onthe line, you would rather have

(01:36:28):
more confidence and more proofbefore you make big big bets. So
customer discovery is just oneof the best ways to go derisk.
Validate is a word I'll use alot, and give yourself
confidence, and not justyourself. Again, because you can
be overconfident, you can befalsely confident, but give true
confidence and rationale for whya thing is the right thing to

(01:36:49):
do.
Mhmm. So talking to yourcustomers is a simple way to say
it, and you'll get very far ifyou just do that, and then you
can layer in. Again, it's awhole discipline and practice.
Talk to them in the right way.Ask them the right questions.
Be very iterative about thequestions and the way you ask
them, and then even further, getthem to experience the thing. So
the train example is a perfectexample.

Speaker 1 (01:37:09):
So let's get let's, like, really break that down. So
first, you have identifying thecorrect, quote unquote,
audience, then you have askingthe correct, quote unquote,
questions, and then you have inthe right way. How do you first
select your audience?

Speaker 2 (01:37:26):
Yeah. This is fun because, ultimately, who your
audience is, there's a lot ofpeople in the world. The markets
the world is way bigger than anyof us can conceive.
1,000,000,000 and billions ofpeople, the Internet is huge,
the city you live in is waybigger than you think. So you
think you wanna talk to thesecertain people, whether it's to
sell them something or becauseyou think they're the
constituents that are gonna loveyour new initiative.

(01:37:48):
You think. It's a hypothesis. SoI say you just have to start
somewhere. You just have to havea hypothesis. Again, the
scientific method starts with ahypothesis.
I think this is true. I don'tknow it. Which you

Speaker 1 (01:38:01):
should write down.

Speaker 2 (01:38:02):
Which you should write down.

Speaker 1 (01:38:04):
Verify. Right.

Speaker 2 (01:38:05):
Be be as clear as be again, the scientific method
creates things that areinvalidatable, meaning you can
disprove it. Mhmm. And if youcreate a hypothesis that's not
disprovable, you haven't beenscientific. That's where
pseudoscience comes in. You saythings that are just
unfalsifiable.

Speaker 1 (01:38:22):
Could you do this for us as if you're back at day 1 of
your day 1? Like, what was yourfirst hypothesis, and then how
did you

Speaker 2 (01:38:29):
Sure.

Speaker 1 (01:38:30):
Find your audience?

Speaker 2 (01:38:31):
So our hypothesis was that there is a new a new ish,
they've been around, but there'snow more class of
entrepreneurial people who areembarking on entrepreneurial
journeys. There's somewherebetween negative 6 months,
meaning they might not have evenleft their day job, to 6 months
in to their entrepreneurialjourney and they're floundering.

(01:38:56):
So who is this person?Generally, Internet native,
white collar professionals whowere active on Twitter and face
or mostly Twitter, frankly, orcertain LinkedIn communities.

Speaker 1 (01:39:08):
Just to clarify for me. So the hypothesis is there
is a floundering group of protoentrepreneurs who we can help.

Speaker 2 (01:39:16):
Well, that's 2 hypotheses. It's the who, the
group of entrepreneurs or protoentrepreneurs. And then the
other hypothesis is what istheir problem or their need? K.
And so the need is they arelooking for community, they're
looking for education, they'relooking for a leg up, the things
that happen when you're part ofan in crowd.
And so one thing I'll say aboutour hypothesis is that's like a

(01:39:39):
few too many things altogether.Right? One of those could be
true more than the other. It'shard to differentiate if you
don't separate them.

Speaker 1 (01:39:46):
If you were going back to do it again, what would
be your opening hypothesisrecognizing that that does not
preclude you from having afuture hypothesis?

Speaker 2 (01:39:54):
I focus on one of those things. Is it community?
Is it education? Is itmentorship? Etcetera.
I would have focused on onespecific need. So you have the
who, you have the why, and thenthe what is what you bring to
the table. And that's thehypothesis. I think that by
creating a virtual cohort basedcommunity, we'll deliver this.

(01:40:16):
We'll solve for that need.
Actually, really what I'm sayingis solve for that need, but
solve for that need in such away that people will put money
down and not just any amount ofmoney, enough money to pay me
and my staff to make a business.And so it's not just put money
down, but love it so much thatthey tell their friends.

Speaker 1 (01:40:33):
Okay. So you have these three initial hypotheses.
You need to confirm all of themto some degree to have a
successful business, but you'rejust gonna test out the first
one to start. That's gonna bethe who. And so then when

Speaker 2 (01:40:45):
That's not entirely true. Right? So a business is
interesting because you have totest those first three together.
Because Okay. The who, theproblem, and the solution,
they're a package.
And this is what's really toughabout is you can be a little
right and a little wrong. So theway we tested it was we just put
a website up and launched it onsocial media and had a form that

(01:41:09):
somebody could sign up on. Wedidn't take any money right away
either. We just said, are youinterested? And we got, like, a
100 people to sign up within,like, a week.
And we told them there was aprice and and so we kind of knew
this was close to real. So,yeah, the test if I had put a
paywall right away, I would havegotten different information. I
don't know if it would have beenbetter or smart, but you can

(01:41:31):
adjust things like that. Do youcharge right away? Do you charge
down the road?
How specific do I make it? So Imade it decently unspecific,
which meant I was testing that.Do people find themselves in
this more broadly describedthing? We basically have got
some good yeses for the firstwhile, and then and then things
change. Or another way to say itis our our bar got a lot higher

(01:41:54):
too, and so we had a good thingthat it wasn't a great thing.

Speaker 1 (01:41:57):
Once you had the 200 and a bit in the door, did you
then proceed to do directcustomer discovery or calls with
them to find out So which partsof that stuff were true, or

Speaker 2 (01:42:09):
how did it work? Yeah. So this is where, as a
practitioner who's so close toit, sometimes I, like, fudge my
own rules. So I did calls beforethat launch to understand and
talk to people. We launched it,and then we kinda got just busy
doing it.
And we weren't nearly asstructured to ask them what's
happening, and that's obvious alittle bit to our detriment. We

(01:42:30):
really should have been superstructured about why are you
coming here, what's working,what's not working, do more of
that, less of this. Mhmm. We gotsome feedback, but I would
probably change it a little bit.I wouldn't necessarily wholesale
change what we did just becausenet in the end, that is sort of
like life and what happens andit's the art of it is you really

(01:42:50):
as much as I'll teach you thesethings, you do them differently
in practice.

Speaker 1 (01:42:54):
Yeah. Okay. So I just wanna make sure I'm
understanding this process.Yeah. So if I do, maybe I'm
denser than the listener,probably so.
But so you're first creating ahypothesis. In this case, it's a
multi tiered hypothesis. But forthe sake of this recap, let's
focus on, there is a protoentrepreneur within 6 months of,
you know, starting a businesswho needs assistance. And so

(01:43:17):
then you're creating falsifiableclaims that can be tested,
things that can be disproven,which would include some of the
things you mentioned. They arewithin that time frame of
starting a business.
They, in fact, have a pulse. Wecan reach them on Twitter and
Instagram. They are strugglingwith x, y, and z. And so you can

(01:43:38):
then pick up the phone, identifypeople that meet what you
believe is that group, haveconversations, and okay. Yep.
So now you're in theconversation, and you have to
have the conversation the rightway. What does that mean?

Speaker 2 (01:43:52):
What's that question? So the right question this is
actually a little more cut anddry in the sense that the right
question is just one that is notleading. So you don't presuppose
the answer and say, like, so youreally hated it when this
happened. Right?

Speaker 1 (01:44:07):
Don't be a push pull, people.

Speaker 2 (01:44:09):
So open ended, how did you feel when this happened?
So asking open ended questionsand generally asking past tense
questions. Because if you askfuture tense questions, how
would you react if thishappened? Again, people are it's
open ended, but it's likepontificating. But if you say,
the last time you went to thegrocery store, how did you feel

(01:44:30):
when this happened?
That's gonna be real. So there'sreally 2 premises, open ended
questions and past tense and asspecific as possible. If you ask
questions in those two waysabout the thing you care about,
you're asking good questions.And then it becomes a little bit
of art because people's answersare never completely like,
they're not answering it like asurvey. You wanna listen to

(01:44:51):
everything.
Their excitement, theirintonation, the specifics, do
they go into other areas, allthese things. So you do have to
kind of read between the lines,but if you can ask it those
ways, you're in a much betterspot than like, so would you
like it if this was created foryou? They will say yes every
time, and that's a falsepositive.

Speaker 1 (01:45:07):
Right. Which is only gonna harm you downstream.

Speaker 2 (01:45:09):
Yeah. You're just gonna waste time and money on
the wrong thing and think you'reright and but you're actually
definitely wrong and and youdon't know why you're yeah. It's
gonna be very bad.

Speaker 1 (01:45:18):
And our minds are wired for confirmation bias. We
like to seek evidence thatconfirms our previously held
beliefs, and we can also tie ourego, our identity to an idea in
such a way like, if if you havean idea for something and I have
a coffee cup right here that isa elephant, and it makes me

(01:45:39):
happy. And I've decided thateveryone will be happier with
elephant cups, and I'm going outand calling to have my customer
discovery to determine if, infact, there are people who drink
liquids and would be happier outof an elephant cup, if I hear
people say, That's a fuckingstupid idea, or I'd be pissed, I
don't like whatever it is, andI'm having a negative emotional

(01:46:01):
reaction, I've identified withthat. I have tied my identity to
this idea, and I'm no longertaking the critique as a
critique of the idea. I'm takingit as a critique of me in some
way.
It means I'm stupid. It means Idon't understand people. It
means I don't fit in. There'ssome deeper level story that is

(01:46:22):
unconsciously being triggeredthat is causing me to react in
that way. And so I'm wondering,what do you do, if anything, to
either prepare for that so thatyou're not identified with your
idea Mhmm.
Or to process those emotions ifand when they come up?

Speaker 2 (01:46:41):
Yeah. It's kinda like one of those things where, like,
you have an with somebody, butyou don't talk about it right
away, and you let it build, andit builds and builds and gets
way bigger. So the best thing todo is to be the faster you're
moving, the faster you're havingideas and trying them,
everything will feel that theseare quicker, faster, breakable,
discardable things. And sothat's the best way to get ahead

(01:47:03):
of it all. It is to be like, I'mgonna have a new idea next week,
so let's just move on.
Mhmm. But then that cuts theother way. I've seen people do
this. They hold on to an ideafor too long, and it's like,
this has gotten way too big. Youjust need to ship it.
Just get it out of here. And sothat then is pulling teeth and
pushing, and it's tough. And so,yes, you really need to find
yourself the best place to be isin a, like, mode where it's
moving fast and kind ofhappening. That's the main,

(01:47:25):
like, tactical thing I can sayto get your mind in a spot
where, like, you yeah. You treatthe idea as a very killable
thing.
And then if you are holding onto ideas, it just means that,
like, your environment is notsuch that, like, you have any I
mean, truly, like, psychologicalsafety around, like, saying
either to yourself or to yourcofounder or to your anyone,

(01:47:46):
boss, investors, this was a badidea. I like to get to a spot
where I'm working with peoplewhere I tell them like we're
gonna try things and they're notgonna work, get ready for it.
And all you have to do is saythat upfront. And if everyone's
on board with that, and then youpay it off, then you're in the
glare.

Speaker 1 (01:48:00):
The way that I've used that most successfully is I
am not great at rememberingnames, and especially when
you're in the public light,you're meeting, I mean,
sometimes hundreds of people aday. The single best strategy I
ever identified was every time Imeet somebody, I say, hey. So
nice to meet you. I'm really badat remembering names. If I ask

(01:48:23):
you again, I apologize.
It's just because I really wannaknow. You own it, and it's like
it's freedom to your spirit, butyou've also now switched the
thing. Because now, if and whenyou forget, you're no longer
forgetting because you'recareless. You are asking because
you care, which is alsoauthentically true. Yes.
And, so that that reallyresonates with me. I I think,

(01:48:46):
yeah, just tell the team upfront.

Speaker 2 (01:48:49):
It's that's the same principle. It resonates it shows
them that, like, I care enough,and this is how we're gonna
operate, and I know this is thebest way to do it. And so come
along.

Speaker 1 (01:48:58):
So good. So good. Andrew, this has been so fun.
There are still innumerablethings on my sheet that I really
hoped we could get to, so maybethey'll be around too. But we
always finish this show with thesame question for every guest.
And I just I wanna just reallythank and celebrate you for
bringing wisdom from a knowledgetradition that is foreign to

(01:49:20):
many of us in, and I really hopethat it can be transferred and
used. And I think there's a lotof gold here to do that with.
The question is this. The thehumans listening to this podcast
are not passive observers. Theyare the humans in the arena.
And if you were to leave themwith just one thing, one
thought, one idea, one quote,one practice, one anything that

(01:49:43):
would best resource them to be apersonal vector for healing our
politics, what would you leavethem with?

Speaker 2 (01:49:53):
All these things that we've said of preparing, being
ready to fail, all these things,really come home when you've set
up your environment to acceptthose attitudes and those
practices. Walking into ameeting saying like, hey, guys,
this is gonna get interrupted inthis way or like, we're setting
up a budget. Hey, guys, we'regonna set aside money and we're
gonna do this thing or again,whatever the setting that

(01:50:13):
intention, setting that spaceand getting the right people
aligned to you is going to giveyou all the air cover you need
to then put those in practiceand create that feedback loop.
You're gonna bring people intothis new way of thinking and
working and and living. They'regonna feel it.
They're gonna see you guys goingfaster and moving, and then it's
all gonna snowball from there.Create that space. That's an
awesome way to get this thinggoing, and then it'll just

(01:50:35):
happen.

Speaker 1 (01:50:36):
Beautiful. Andrew, thank you so much for coming on
the Healing Our Politicspodcast. It's just awesome to
spend time with you, brother.

Speaker 2 (01:50:42):
Thank you so much. I so appreciate you, Skip. Great
to be here.

Speaker 1 (01:50:47):
Thank you so much for joining us today. If you wanna
put what you've heard here todayinto practice, sign up for our
newsletter, the leader'shandbook, where each month
you'll receive just one emailwith a curated selection of the
most useful tools and practicesdiscussed on this podcast today
and over the course of the lastmonth. Delivered in simple how

(01:51:10):
to worksheets, videos, and audioguides, so you and your teams
can try and test these out inyour own life and see what best
serves you. And lastly, if youwanna be a vector for healing
our politics, if you wanna doyour part, take out your phone
right now and share this podcastwith 5 colleagues you care
about. Send a simple text, dropa line, and leave the ball in

(01:51:33):
their court.
Because the truth is, the morethose around you do their work,
the better it will show up inyour life, in your community,
and in your world. Have abeautiful day. The Healing Hour

(01:51:54):
Politics podcast is brought toyou by the Elected Leaders
Collective, the first leadingand most highly recognized name
in mental health, well-being,and performance coaching for
elected leaders and publicservants designed specifically
for you. Now don't be fooled bythe name. The Elected Leaders

(01:52:14):
Collective is not just forelected leaders.
It is for all public servants.Staffers, volunteers,
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world but are tired as I am ofthe anger, stress, and betrayal,

(01:52:37):
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arguing with colleagues who aresupposed to be on your team and
questioning if it's even worthit any more than the elected
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(01:53:20):
people in your communitytogether to solve real problems
and get shit done.
You'll reduce stress, anxiety,and overwhelm and become a more
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(01:54:04):
That'swww.electedleaderscollective.com
and starting today.

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