Is there a line between Founder optimism and delusion?

Welcome back to the episode of the Startup Therapy Podcast. This is Ryan Rutan joint, as always by my friend, the founder, and CEO of startups.com.

Will, Schroeder will man, they run on lots of different things and, uh, founders, founders have to run on a lot of optimism. Some might say that it, uh, it, it borders the line of, of delusion. You said something once and it was, it was something along the lines of, you know, like. Firefighters run into a fire that's already existing and, and get out. Founders run in, start furnishing the lobby, ask if they can pay rent.

Yeah. And then light the fire, which sounds delusional, but it's really, probably better looked at as optimism. But in your mind, like what's the alternative, right? If, if, if a founder doesn't show up. Full of optimism and believing that this thing can happen, then what are they, what? What would they run on at that point? They're an employee and that's an employee. As employee shows up and an employee is like, Hey, just tell me what to do and I'll do it. We have this weird gear.

And, and note even has to tell us to have it.

We just have it where we're willing to create this fantasy, this delusion, and live in that world, and not only live in that world ourselves, but convince all of these other people to live in that world as well. Yeah. Yep. Employees, customers, partners, stat. All of it. Yeah. Everybody. Yeah. You know, investors are a great one, right? Yeah. And we believe in this delusion so greatly. So greatly. Like, like religiously. Even though nothing around us whatsoever supports it. Right?

Right now we're like, we're gonna change the world and, you know, build Uber, we're gonna build, you know, whatever. But everything around us right now is like, dude, you're still living in your parents' basement. Like, like, we don't have $500 in our checking account. No one wants to work here. This idea has never been proven, like nothing around us indicates that this fantasy that we have should inspire any level of optimism. Right. And yet. Our business, our what we do here is driven.

Wholeheartedly by creating this optimism out of total chaos in, in many cases, like an abyss of bleakness. And so I thought it would be fun to unpack that. Like, where the hell does that come from? Why do we have it? Like, is it honesty? You know, is is, is it honest saying I think something's gonna happen. That may never happen. So I think as we dig into this today, and it's a topic I wanna talk about for a long time, I really wanna talk about that, that source of.

Optimism in, in how we even get it. The font of optimism. Yeah. I, I think it is interesting, you, you touched on something there, which is that like they're all sort of chaos by nature. Also short, I mean, maybe not by design, but by nature, right? Like if that chaos didn't exist, if there wasn't chaos to be unwound, there's no opportunity. Yeah, that's true. Right? Like it's already solved at that point, or it's not worth, worth solving. It's the chaos that creates it.

I mean, I think it's important to note like startups aren't set on fire by accident. It's kind of the, uh, we light that match to start to power the vision, right? That's how we see where we're going, right? It's the, it's the, the flames of that fire run toward the chaos. What drive us forward. It reminds me of a, uh, a commercial from like in the eighties or nineties, and it was showing this like huge commotion in the distance. Like I think of almost like, like a, a long plane.

And, and on the, in the distance there was like explosions and all this like, like chaos, uhhuh, you saw all these people fleeing from it, right? From the explosions. Then you saw one guy running toward it. Towards it. Yes. And it was the ad for the Marines, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, and it said something to, to the effect of we run toward chaos when everybody else runs away. Right? Yeah. You know, we strip out Marines there and, and, and insert founders.

Now of course, it's slightly less physical present danger, uh, in our life. A hundred percent. But metaphor, but exactly the same concept, right? Yes. Yes. The people fleeing are employees. Right. Those people are like, this is chaos. This is crazy. I'm gonna go get another job. And also, they're the rational people. Uh, in this commercial. The founder runs directly toward that chaos.

Kinda like you said a moment ago with the, uh, the firefighter, firefighter runs into a building with the optimism that, that he or she's going to get out as soon as possible, right? Correct. A founder runs into a burning building and like you said, sets up camp, right? Like, yep. Yeah. This is where we're gonna camp. I'll be here for the next decade. It's already got a campfire, guys. Yeah, that's idea. The campfire is falling down around us. That's okay. Exactly.

And also pouring gasoline on it while, you know, uh, while they're coming. Yeah. Yeah. So if we start there, like, like why the hell do we even do that? Like, like what would possibly take a capable, potentially rational person and say, I'm gonna go do the, the least rational thing I possibly can with the, the smallest chance of success versus all my other options and passionately drag everyone I know into this burning building because I think something, you know, great's gonna come of it.

That's kind of psychotic. Like if you put it in terms like that, that way, yes. But it's kinda what we do, you know?

I, I think it, a lot of it times it does, it starts with the passion. Uh, you marry that passion up for like, you know, wanting to solve that problem, wanting, make that dent in the universe. You marry that up with what at least can look like, can be outsized economic impact and, and financial outcomes. And, uh, for most of us, some desire to just be able to do things on our own terms and do it the way we wanted to. And this is one of the few places you can do that, right? Right.

You can't walk into an accounting office and, and start a fire. Well, you can, you just, you go to jail for it. Um, right. It's, the problems have been solved. Right. Like it's just, it, it is what it is. There's no chaos to be unwound there in most cases. Agreed, agreed. Um, you don't get to create anything, right? And so I think it's this draw towards creation, draw towards creation of something we want to do and, and sort of this.

More perfect future that we can envision lit by the flames of this fire that we started, that we are willing to be unreasonably optimistic as we move towards trying to create it. Knowing, knowing in most cases, and being willing to wake up every day and ignore that fact that the odds are really well stacked against.

I think once founders get into this a little bit, like, uh, in when consequences start to get created, consequence could be them not making payroll, you know, things like that, like real issues. I think going into it, it's sexy. It's sexy to have a big idea. It's fun to ideate, to brainstorm, to throw, you know, ideas in the whiteboard. But when that changes from the initial pixie dust, as we always call it, to the actual job of what this is, which is every day waking up.

Being like, oh my God, my job today is to create 10 more problems I didn't have yesterday. And, and if I don't do that, I'm not doing my job. And when I say it in those terms, like people think, I'm like overstating it. That is the job. Your job is to go find problems. Now it's a hard job, don't get me wrong. It's a hard job, right? Ryan, you and I wake up in the morning. You and I are very early in the morning, and then we start unpacking problems immediately.

We literally look for stuff to go, uh, break or fix one of the two. They seem to arrive with more frequency than the Amazon man at this point. Yeah, they do. They do. But for a lot of people that, that don't understand this path, yeah. They look at that as, I can't believe everything's breaking. What am I doing wrong? And it's like, yeah, no, this is the path. They're actually, this is the job isn't another path. Right.

I watch it not just with founders, but I, I think about different paths in our lives, d times in our lives. We have kind of this, why is everything breaking? It must be me. Both. Both. You and I have teenage daughters and they're living in this for the first time where their social circles and everything else like that are becoming geometrically more complex. You know, people aren't asking people to dances and things like that and, and they're like, oh my God, what am I doing wrong?

We look at that and we're like, that's just being teenager. Yeah, that's, that's, that's the case. All the trials and tribulations of being a age. Age, yeah. But if you're living it, if you haven't been through it before, and this is, you know, akin to us seeing new founders that come to startups.com and their heads are on fire because they're like, there are so many problems that I'm dealing with right now. What am I doing wrong?

My most consistent answer is, you're exactly where you're supposed to be. Yep. This is exactly what you're supposed to be doing right now. You are supposed to be in the shit in all these problems, losing sleep. It's not awesome. It's not healthy, I'm saying, but this is the job. You know, it reminds me thinking about that the first time founder versus the, the, the not first time founder. Right? People have been through this a bit more.

And I think we may have referenced this on the pod before, but it's essentially like that scene from insert World War II movie here, where you've got like the grizzled sergeant walking around and you've got both the new leadership in the terms of like the commissioned officers and the, you know, the, the first time, uh, grunts. They're all running around like pure chaos and you know, the s sitting private Ryan walking through not reacting at all. Right, right.

Like light in smoke and just walking through all the explosions because they understand that that is the job. They know that this is what it looks like and it's what it's gonna be. Right. Like, you know, the founder job, to go back to our fire analogy, it's something like, it's, you're really, you're, you're managing the burn. Right. You, by you, you're trying to control the, the fuel, uh, which is generally kinda like what we're focused on within the startup at a given point.

The oxygen being the amount of attention you give that, um, and then making sure that there are some exits. IE your, your runway. So, so this whole thing is survivable, right? Like how do we manage towards some kind of an outcome in this chaos? I think that was the other thing that I realized at, at some point, probably not nearly early enough, um, was that my job wasn't to eliminate the chaos either, right? I wasn't trying to do away with the chaos.

I was trying to leverage some of the momentum that existed within the chaos. To move forward and that was it. Right? And then just to be okay, it's like, oh yeah, my job isn't to make all of this normal. It's not going to be right. Maybe at some point in the very, in the distant future when the startup achieves everything it wants to, yes. Then, um, but rarely even then. So stick with that. There's all this chaos. And most founders, uh, you know, 'cause we, we advise them all the time.

They'll come to us and say like, I am, you know, overwhelmed with chaos right now. How am I supposed to inspire? Like, where do I create this optimism in the face of so much negativity? So much negativity. And, and I wanna talk about that kinda where that comes from and, and, and you know, how we manufacture that. But I think about it in terms of, um. Because we are in the business of delusion, and everybody hates that term because it, it sounds like, it sounds negative, it sounds false.

It's, you know, all these things. I hear accurate. It probably is. It's, it is what it is. Yeah, man. So, but, but I look at it and I say. As a person who has always lived in a state of delusion, you know, I've just got a wild imagination and that's a big part of this job. Yeah. I remember as being like a 9-year-old kid on, in the summer, I'd wake up and I'd be like, I wanna build a fort.

Where I grew up in Connecticut, um, we had lots and lots of woods, so all the houses backed up to woods, so, and I never, isn't it weird that I still wake up like that? Will, I'm not even kidding. Jack and I saw some stuff from like a construction project the other day where they're like, gutting this building.

We saw this stuff and we stood there for like 10 minutes being like, Ooh, we could grab that stuff, take it over to Park Levy there, and we could build a fort, literally designing this timeless man how to, yeah, that would've gone over well. So, so the moment I woke up though, the delusion began. The delusion began, I pictured the full fortress that was going to get built. Okay. I remember I'd grab graph paper. I loved this part, right?

This is before SketchUp existed, and I would sketch out exactly what the fort would look like, you know, in, in, in its purpose. And, you know, its grand vision. And I would then go to my, my, um, the kids in my neighborhood and I would recruit every single kid that would listen and sell them on the idea of what this fort was going to be. Where we were gonna source materials and get them super pumped about what their role in the grand vision would be, et cetera.

I mean, it was founder 1 0 1, right? Like, I mean, it's funny that I was just instinctively doing that ever since I was a kid. Yeah. But. In my mind when I woke up that morning, that fort was already built. The only difference between where I was right now and being there was all the work I had to do in between to make it happen. Sure. But in my mind, it was a foregone conclusion. Well stick on that for a second. 'cause I think that's an important distinction between founders and most people.

I think that most people need proof to believe. Founders, on the other hand, just need belief to go and create some proof. Uh, correct. Yeah. As long as we're willing to believe we will go, we'll, we'll go prove it, right? Yep. Everyone else is sitting around going, prove this to me so that I can believe it, and we're like, that's not the way I see the world. It just isn't. And again, for those folks that need proof, I get it. Yeah, I, I get it. You see this in religion, right?

And that, that is the, the, the fundamental difference in religion. You either have faith and you believe. Or you insist on proof and you don't get it right. It just, it, it's one of the two. And, and, and those are very polarizing spectrums. Okay? Now, for people who believe, they often not always don't need to be told to believe, there's just something in them that is willing to manufacture that belief. And hold onto it very strongly and, and clearly around religion.

Nothing has inspired more humans on the planet than what is religion. A belief in something that that might not be. And again, I'm not knocking anybody's religion, I'm just saying everyone recognizes that there could be a chance that, that it isn't what we think it is, no matter how, how strong our belief is. And, but we're willing to believe anyway. That is a founder. The founder says there's, I can't prove a damn thing.

I have no idea whether this is gonna actually become this thing, but I believe so strongly in the value of what it could be, that I'm gonna manufacture all of the optimism that I've ever had in my life around this single goal. And I'm, again, I'm expire. Lots of people to join, invest, and all these things. But at, at some point, and this is, this is, uh, what I want to kind of dial into at some point. Like when it's first starting, it's just a concept. There's no consequence yet.

Fast forward three years in, I haven't gotten paid. I've burned through all my personal savings. I've got a bunch of people that I can barely keep paid. Maybe I'm, I'm swinging rope to rope on, uh, investor checks. Where the hell am I supposed to get that optimism now? Like what does that even look like at this point?

Yeah, and I think that's where a lot of people that we talk to, they're in that spot and they're like, once the pixie dust of the big idea ran off, now I have the reality of what this thing is and how the hell am I supposed to draw more optimism from the reality around me? You know what I mean? Yeah. I think the future visionally goes so far, right? Like you waking up, you waking up and seeing that for that's already built, that's great. Right? We seeing it as already real.

That's, I think that's where it, it starts.

For me, it was then always about kind of like this alchemy around, uh, minor wins, right? Like little outcomes that are signals that, that can kind of turn into some momentum. Um, so maybe it's that waking up and, and and creating the, the sketch on graph paper. And so I go like, okay, yes. So now I can show this to somebody else and they'll, they'll be able to see it. It is closer to the real that I see and then getting somebody to agree.

And so it's, it's really about that series of, of kind of micro wins and, and leveraging those together so that you. Because that's where it comes from, right? Like at some point I've met very, very few founders. I've met a few who will just continue with that sort of like religious level of faith. Where it's like, I have yet to see any proof of this, but I believe in it so strongly that I'm willing to keep doing this. I, I keep, I keep running into nose and walls everywhere.

I'm willing to keep doing it. Most founders have a limit. I, I, I would argue probably all founders have a limit there somewhere. Um, but I think that, you know, where most of us end up either moving forward, turning back is when we either do or don't get those, those little wins. And for me, it was about ritualizing them as, as, as much as I could. Log them. Make sure the team who wins is aware of them, wins or wins, whoever it is that I'm certain, right?

So just memorialize them in some ways and then use that to, to compound morale within the team if that's necessary. Or just even within myself to like go back and look at it and go, okay, this actually has added up to something. Right? This isn't, it isn't a zero yet everybody else is looking at it going as zero. I'm still seeing that future vision, but there's also some there. There's a little bit of smoke. Maybe we don't have fire yet, but there's at least something here.

You know something that's really funny about everything we talk about here is that none of it is new. Everything you're dealing with right now has been done a thousand times before you, which means the answer already exists. You may just not know it. But that's okay. That's kind of what we're here to do. We talk about this stuff on the show, but we actually solve these problems all dayLong@groups.startups.com.

So if any of this sounds familiar, stop guessing about what to do, let us just give you the answers to the test and be done with it.

I remember when I was raising VC for, for my first company, Uhhuh, that I would eventually successfully raise for, we were on 50 investor pitches, of which every single person said, no. True. Every single person said, no. Now it's never quite that binary when you're in the pitches, like there, there's, you have good pitches that still end up in a no. Yeah, yeah. So you, you kind of manufacture some optimism from it.

Sure. But you feel like you got a little further, you get some nods on slides that were just absolute because flat previously Yeah. Yeah. Maybe like, like a third of those, you know, a, a hard No, from the, the get go. Yeah. A third of those you get to know later on, and a third of those are all like, Hey, maybe. Yeah. Right. And so you're manufacturing the optimism for, for those ones that, that might, uh, close even though in, in the end none of them did.

But then 50, you know, meeting 51, this person was like, this is the best idea I've ever seen. Like, uh, you know, shut up and take my money. Yeah. And we're like, huh. Had we given up in meeting 10, which a rational person after 10 meetings with, you know, very, uh, substantial investors would've been like, you know, this probably isn't a great idea. A rational person wouldn't have done it 40 more times. Right. But we're not rational people.

We're not, and and I, I think when you try to apply a rational filter, and, and by the way, I'm not saying a reasonable filter, rational filter to, in my mind, the distinction would be yes, rational says, look, I've, I've looked at the data. The data says Stop doing this. Okay. Correct. Very rational, reasonable person said, I've looked at the data too. It also says, uh, it may not be probable, but it doesn't mean it, it can't be done. Correct.

Right. You know, I, I reasoned, I've looked at both and I said, Hey, chances are we won't get it done, but there's 10% chance that we will carry on. Right. It's, we've, we've gotten nothing but No, so far, but it's not definitive yet that that's the only answer that could possibly come back. Correct. When I think about, you know, where this optimism is coming from, when I think about where it stems from, I think you touched on it, it stems from those little, those little wins, right?

That, that maybe it's not a yes, but it's a, maybe. It's like, well, shit, we haven't had a maybe before, right? When you and I are building product together, we built a lot of products over a long period of time. We launched a new product, a new price point, you know, a, a new feature and one person buys. Now the weight of that one person means nothing, you know, relative to our business. But it opens the door of hope. Yes. And, and we go, ah, if, if it's one, it could be two.

If it could two, it could be 20. Yeah. Right?

Yeah. It's not zero anymore. Exactly. Because zero is a very specific number. And I think that optimism comes from these tiny little signals that breed hope. And I think that when, when people look at hope, I think we tend to wildly undervalue hope. I think we look at hope as this childlike fantasy. And what I'm saying is that shred of hope, that shred of optimism is our business. Right? That is literally what, what, what makes great companies is that shred of hope.

Yeah. That shred of possibility. And when you look back at so many companies that have had that like down to the last, you know, dollar, down to the, the, the last morsel moment and they've come back, the difference was hope. Now, for every one of those stories where the person came back, there's a thousand of them where they fell off a cliff like, uh, Wally Coyote, but yeah. That's the point, that's the hope. That's what changes it at the same time. Right. That's the thing.

You, you gotta, you gotta play to that point. That's where it becomes definitive. Right, right, right.

I think that's what's, what's so hard for people who, who aren't built like this, don't have this gear, don't have this mentality to look at and go, like, why would you wait until you have absolute undeniable proof that it won't work? Yeah. When you were willing to continue without any kind of proof that it might, like, why does it, why, why are you so willing on one hand.

To kick that decision down the road until this, until you get this like you, it has to be so highly specific for you to say no. But you'll take even, you know, a, a a a, a little bit of cent on the wind that says maybe this is still possible. And I think it just goes back to, you know, being willing to say that like, whatever the cost and the loss is of this not working means less to me than the possibility that it, that it could, could be true.

If I go back in time, I can even think of times where like, I'm not gonna say I lied to myself, but I definitely intentionally inflated things, right, simply because I needed some hope. Right. You have to though. I mean, again, that right, that is the business, right? Like there isn't another version of this where everything is going so well that your optimism just comes from so many high fives, right? Like, yeah. That, that world literally doesn't exist.

But I think if you've never done this before and you, and you're like a, a, a, a rational person and you, you get your optimism from positive signals like that constantly happen. Then you look at this going. Why would anybody be optimistic? Right? And you see this with employees that we're not cut out to be at startups, right? As soon as the, the funding starts to go away, or as soon as the product market fit doesn't seem certain, they get the hell out of there.

Like I, I was here when it seemed like all the signals were good, but as soon as they turned negative, I'm out. And, and frankly, you should Part company with that person is fast. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. They're, they're, they're not, they're on the wrong boat. Yeah. Yeah.

The next thing I would say is when I talk to people about this manufacturing optimism, I think one of the things that, that we get back is, well, am I lying to people? Sure, sure, sure. Yeah. Are we talking about dishonesty, you know, to Is is my delusional lie. Yeah. Yeah. And, and here's the answer. It can be if you know the answer. Let me explain the difference between Theranos, where, where the founder. Quite specifically lied to people.

It's because she knew the answer was one thing and she gave them a different answer. That's called lying. Yeah. That's not optimism. That's lying. Right? Yeah. That's, that's different. That's called optimism, right? Or it's not a called optimism. Optimism is when there's a chance that it could be true. Optimism is a bet that has some odds. It's not a coverup. Right. What she did was a coverup. Optimism is a bet. Uh, lying is a coverup. Yeah. She knew the answer was no. Yeah. Right. You know?

Does this product work currently? No. Now, to be fair, if she had phrased it differently and she just said Not yet. Not yet. Right. That would be different. That would be different There difference Not yet. Says the answer is no. It does not work, but it could. When you do it differently and you say, yes, it works, and you knowingly know, it won't even, even if the hope of course is, is that, you know, you'll get it to a working, um, viable state, that's still a lie.

I think that distinction, I'll give you a quick story. There's a guy, uh, that, that gave me this great story back in like 2006 or seven. His name is Matt Coffin and Matt has started a company called Lower My bills.com. Uhhuh like this. This would've been an early two thousands kind of darling, and he sold that for like three 50 million cash to the same company that the guy I mentioned before, Cameron Porters and Johnny sold price grabber to both to Experian.

Around the same time I had met Matt and he was looking to invest in one of my companies. Matt was telling me a story about how in the early days of lower my bills, he was like, basically I had to present to the company the whole, they had lots of employees at the time. He presents to the company that, you know, things are gonna be awesome, you know, we're, we're gonna be a big company, get acquired, whatever.

And then he exits the meeting, goes in the next room, and he's like, we can't make payroll next week. Right now. Now lots of founders have been in that. In that moment, and it's a cool story when you go on to sell for hundreds of millions of dollars. It's a less cool story when that's where it ends, right? Where you just don't pay everybody. Right? Uh, you know, actually a, a good, you know, I don't want to get too into this, but like s was a good example of that.

But in this case, the founder actually did not know that they weren't gonna be able to pay everybody, but ran into a situation where in, in very short order, she's like, I've got 450 people that I can't pay on Monday. That is a big problem. But she also didn't tell them that they're gonna get paid, so she didn't lie to them. She's very honest about it, but crazy shit like this happens in our business. It does.

But again, to your point, you have to draw that, that distinction first around uncertainty versus certainty. Right. It, it has to be right. Honest optimism is okay, right? Here's the situation, here's the plan, here's the chance. Assuming there's a chance. I think it's when it's, here's the situation, here's the plan, and, you know, there's no chance. That's where this becomes problematic, really quick. Uh, not, not that we get to pick and choose these things.

All we can do is pick and choose how we react to 'em, and I think that's the, the, the core difference then between. Honest optimism and just absolutely, uh, uh, you know, malfeasance, one of my favorite lines is in the, the most recent Deadpool and, uh, Wolverine finds out that Deadpool has been lying to him the entire time, Uhhuh. And he's like, it wasn't a lie. It was an educated wish. It was an educated wish.

And I thought, I thought, uh, I might print that on something and hang it somewhere near, I mean, how mean chef's kiss to that one, right? I mean, like Yeah. Whoever, whoever wrote that line is an absolute genius. Yes. Right. An educated wish. Right? Which I thought an educated wish was so incredibly well said and so appropriate. To what we're talking. Right. It fits. I mean, this is an educated witch. It's the new mantra.

Yeah. Right. But when I think about that, and again, the difference between being like just blindly optimistic and being dishonest. Right. Because being dishonest is, is is very different, right? Yeah. When I look at this optimism that that isn't the truth, but isn't lying. The difference, like I said, is if you know the answer is one thing without question, then any other answer is lying. But if there's a chance that that might not be true, then it's usually grounded in optimism.

For example, every founder that's ever gonna raise money has to go through this employee comes to them. I heard things aren't going so well with this funding round. Are we gonna be able to, uh, you know, make payroll in two months, so to speak? How, however, they, uh, verbalize that. Sure. And you say, yeah. Now, are you lying? Yes. If you know for sure that, that you can't raise more money, right? Yeah. The problem is you don't know that for sure. The problem is you don't, right?

You're still talking to a few people. There's maybe one thing, you've got a deal in the works, you've got this partnership, you know, something like that. And so if you were just say, yep, nobody's getting paid in two months, then at that point you pretty much cancel any chance that you would ever save this year. Yeah. And everybody goes into this gray area somewhere between, Hey, I thought this was gonna work, and. Even now, I don't believe it's gonna work. Right, right.

But, but I'm too afraid to, to own up to what I, what just happened. It happened the whole time. I think, you know, as you're getting further into those murkier waters, I think there's a point at which optimism starts to work against you. I, I think at which, yeah, like we see it when, when we went out and bought companies. This was a great example.

Uh, virtual was an example of that, but, you know, there's many, many others that we bought or looked at, and the founder was like, well, I still think this swing's worth a hundred million. Mm-hmm. You did $25,000 in revenue last year. Right. You know? Yes. But the data, yeah, yeah. Right. Yeah, yeah. You sure there, there's a chance. It's not a good one.

And it's not the vast likelihood, but yeah, there's, there's a really small chance this is worth the a hundred million, but that's where, in my mind, that's where the difference between. I have some basis for why this could happen and I'm just making shit up at this point. Right. Yeah. That's as close to lying as you can get, which is my point, I think, where I start to see it. So when we get close to this line between hopeful and harmful, I think that there's, there's sort of.

Three components to that. For me, it's like if we've got facts sort of like what do we know? We got some faith, you know, what are we aiming to accomplish here? And then the fight, which is what we're willing to do to make that true. Like the, the steps that we believe will get us there. I think where I start to see it go wrong is when it falls back just on the first two. It's sort of, we know we're outta money.

But we believe we'll be able to get more before that payroll's due in two months, but they don't have the fight anymore. They don't know like what the actual steps they would go and take. This is where we're, we're now running into a real problem. For me. It's like if you, if you can tell me, here's the situation, it's good, bad, or ugly, here's what I believe we can go do, and you can tell me how you think you're gonna go about it. You're still on the right side of the equation.

I think the minute that last piece disappears and you go like, well, I. Don't have the money. Yeah. But I really hope that we'll get it. But I don't have any idea from where, how you're on the wrong side. You're, you're moving over into harmful territory at that point.

I agree. And, and I, I think that's what I want folks to understand, that there is a threshold where the upside to maintaining that optimism is actually no longer there. Right. And now you're really just mitigating the downside, in which case again, yep. You're starting to get into Theranos territory, which I think is a dangerous spot for sure.

When we talk to founders, and I can tell they're at the point of no return, the, the advice that I give them, and I've given this to many, many founders, some of those are listeners of this show, I've said, look, you're at a point now where you're no longer trying to win. Instead, you're just focused on trying not to fail, and, and no one wins with that strategy and, and it's time to unwind this thing. And I basically try to give them permission.

To let go because at that point I know their optimism is a delusion. Even to them, it's, it's no longer benefiting them. Right? But here's what's interesting, man. If we don't have this optimism, if we don't manufacture this optimism. We can't win. There's no version where you do what we do based purely on facts, right? It just, if, if that's the business you think you're in, you're in the wrong business. Man. I just saw a clip last night that illustrates this.

It was from while not sleeping because, uh, Jack has in two, has had a cough for two weeks and, and it only comes at night to keep us awake. It's as we've decided that's what it's for. But I, I happen to catch this line. Do you remember the show? Whose line is it? Anyways?

Yeah, I have no idea how deeply, uh, this thing was buried on the internet, but this, this clip resurfaced last night for me, and the, the prompt was worst or least inspiring battle cries and the least inspiring battle cry was the guy runs out and he goes. Oh no. I was like, yeah, right. You have to have optimism. Right, right, right. You show up at the fight, you gotta believe you have some chance of winning, otherwise you definitely won't.

My favorite example of that, and you know your battle cry is perfect, is the opening scene from Saving Private Ryan, just telling the kids about this. Yeah, definitely don't show it to 'em, but no, exactly that. They were like, can we watch it? I was like, absolutely not. I, right. I remember when I watched that scene in the theater, like I was almost sick to my stomach and, and not because it was graphic in nature. That was part of it is because I, no, no feel people, the emotional realization.

Yeah. Like, holy, somebody actually did that. Now, now back that up. If I recall the scene opens up with, um, Tom Hanks on a, uh, you know, one of the loading boats that's gonna hit the shores, and his hand is shaking like he's, you know, trying to drink or do something to, to try to like calm his nerves. Every guy starts throwing up and everything else like that. Now I wanna pause there. This isn't about, about the movie, it's about optimism. Okay? Yeah. At some point.

Every single person on those boats had to be convinced that they were gonna be victorious. Now, now stick with that for a second. They were going into certain death. Like there's, there's absolutely, and I use this example because it's so stark. They're going into certain death, but the only way to be victorious, which they were.

Was to have a manufactured optimism to see the world in a way where they didn't get shot, to see the world in a way where they didn't get butchered, but they actually made it past the beach and they made it up to the church, you know, and, and stopped things. Let's say, think of how powerful that is.

Right in the face of absolute certain destruction. Someone generals, then commanders, et cetera, were willing to like to manufacture this optimism. They put together a plan that said this could work, and then this is the crazy part. Convince 156,000 troops. Yep. That they should do the same. Same thing. Yeah. I've had some wild ass ideas in my day. None of them involved. And we should run directly at machine guns. Yeah. Like, yeah, I appreciate that.

If that ever does show up in one of our meetings, I'm, I'm, I'm gonna let you know. Now I'm probably, I probably, I, I won't say a hundred percent, this is where that optimism comes in, but I'll, I'm probably gonna say no. I will say this though, in, uh, kind of as an aside, because we're recording this after Veteran's Day, thank you to all the people that have served. Yes, Ryan. I know you feel the same. The fact that. That level of bravery even exists in humans is bananas to me. Right.

And the fact that we work alongside, we live alongside people who have that level of bravery is unbelievable. I saw this great meme a few years back. It was just talking about like kinda the generational differences and it said your grandparents were called the war, A storm on the beaches of Normandy. This is during COVID. You're being called to sit on your couch. You'll be okay. I was thinking of like the level of bravery generationally.

And I, I always wonder like, you know, if we are, if we had that level of call now, does our generation have that level of optimism or, you know, patriotism or whatever to kind of, to heed that call kind of different world. Big question and, and one that I actually kind of feel a little ill thinking about answering and, and let's, let's hope we'd never answer. But I, I bring that up to say two things.

One, thank you for all the people that, that, uh, ensure our freedom, but also think of what optimism can do. Think, think of how powerful this tool is. Like how powerful, like you can wield this tool, wielding optimism, you know, in the face. Certain death in this case, and again, I know this, you know, this example is kind of dark, but sort of the prove the point to be able to create and wield optimism to those types, types of end games that literally change the world.

That's what we get to do. Yeah. Now how we wield that. Yeah. Slightly different stakes in most cases. Yeah. But, but we're given this tool, this, this thing called optimism. Ryan, I, I think that when founders second guess the value of this optimism, or, you know, hey, everything's going shitty, so, you know, why would I feel anything but shitty? I'm like, ah, that's, that's not the way this works. Right? Like, your job is to manufacture that tool, like to, to wield that tool.

You know what I mean? Yeah. Let's, let's circle back to that. I'm, I'm gonna stick on that scene for a second because there's, there's a really pivotal point in that scene where. There's optimism and it's, and it's, it's optimism, but it's balanced well with, with apprehension and fear and all of that, right? Where they're, they're still in the boat and it's that moment where the, the landing gate drops. Right.

Right. And I think this is an important moment, uh, and sort of an important, uh, piece of the metaphor here. Optimism didn't allow them to win that fight. It allowed them to get to that fight so that they had a chance of winning that fight. Right. That's what we're doing as founders. We're creating that optimism so that we get there and, and we show up. So that we have that chance to win, and there is a moment where then that optimism is no longer what you need now.

You just have to fight and fight and fight and try to get the win, whatever that is, whatever that micro thing is, when it's usually not storming the beaches of normity, it's usually shipping that feature or getting that developer that you shouldn't be able to hire to say yes or, or bringing on that investor, uh, who is skeptical, whatever it is, whatever today's battle happens to be. The optimism is what gets us to, to show up there. And and believe, and man, I, I don't know anybody.

No one can out believe a founder who shows up daily. And it's that optimism that gets us to show up daily. I agree. And it's that belief that actually helps us to accomplish stuff. It's interesting too because it doesn't come from somewhere else. In other words, nobody coaches us to be optimistic. Right. You either have this gear, the world is coaching us to the opposite. They're like, you should give up. You should quit. This is idiotic. Absolutely. Yeah. Go be safe. Right?

I mean, that makes total sense. That is a rational thing to do, but founders have this ability. To manufacture optimism in the face of absolute crazy odds, but also, and this is just as crazy to maintain it. Whereas everyone else, like I said, that commercial at the beginning with the Marines, right, where everyone else is running the other way, we're these crazy people that are willing to suit up and run straight into the chaos.

And no matter how chaotic it gets in for as long as it gets, we're willing to keep doing it. But here's the thing. Yeah. That's our job as founders. Our job is to wake up every day, no matter what the day looks like, and says, I am going to conquer the world. It's not false confidence. It's, it's the tool that we need. If we don't shape that tool, if we don't develop that tool every day, build on that optimism and build on that future, then we don't stand a chance.

If we do in the face of everything, if we wake up every day and we're like, I don't care what the day looks like, I'm gonna crush it. I'm gonna change the world. I'm gonna shape things to the way I want them to my mold. That's what a founder does. That's how we make the world what it's going to be. And if we don't do it, we don't stand a chance. But if we do, we show up with that weapon, we can literally do anything. Overthinking your startup because you're going it alone.

You don't have to, and honestly, you shouldn't because instead, you can learn directly from peers who've been in your shoes. Connect with bootstrap founders and the advisors helping them win in the startups.com community. Check out the startups.com community@www.startups.com to see if it's for you. Could be just the thing you need. I hope to see you inside.