Let's Get Back to Our WHY

TST EP275_Let's Get Back to our Why (Audio Ver.) === [00:00:00] Welcome back to their episode of the startup therapy podcast. This is Ryan Rutan from startups. com joined as always by my friend, the founder and sometimes co carpenter will Schroeder will pretty much every founder. We talked to that early stage. They've got that, that starry eyed look and they've got a, they've got this big North star, this very clear why. And then there's usually a couple of them, right? The why they want to build this, why they want to, they want to go and start to this thing. And it's, it comes in a lot of forms and we can talk about all those, but at some point. When we get caught up in all of the what and the how and the win and the with who we lose sight of that why and and it can cause lots of trouble right but both for the the existence of the business uh particularly for the it's an existential crisis for the founders how do we make sure this doesn't happen and how can we dig in and understand a little bit more about why it happens when it happens where it happens and what we can do to create a little bit of a renaissance around our why and bring that back into the life of the business I think a lot of [00:01:00] founders are in that problem right now. I think a lot of founders, so you know, a lot of us are, are deep into our startups right now and startups go through an epic, almost like a generation of startups. And I think, you know, at this moment in time, we're kind of the tail end of 2024. As we record this, I think we have a whole generations of startups that are like kind of pretty deep in their startups. I've got lots of friends right now that are, that are eight, nine, 10 years into their startups and they've lost their why. Their why. And this is for folks just starting or. For the end there, why is, why did I start this thing? And what did it look like when I first had that idea? Ryan, when you think about the first at the inception point, when you first had an idea, what defines those early moments when you had an idea, when you see a founder, have an idea, what are some of the things that define what becomes the why you started something? So it's interesting. And I think that I'm trying to think of it's always the same sequence of events or, or if it can change a little bit, but sort of, there's always a very similar cast of [00:02:00] characters that show up at this party in my head. Um, the one is around like the people I want to do it for, right. For me, it almost always starts with the who. Right. So it's just like, I see, I see a particular population of people that, that I want to help. And then it's like, okay, so like, why do I want to help them because their, their lives are more difficult than they need to be, or they're suffering from something that's unjust or whatever it is, right. Where there's just this really cool opportunity to help them do something that they do way better. Sure. Awesome. So that's the, that's the who and then, and then a little bit about like the, the, what does that mean? Like, what does that start to look like? How will I be spending my days? Right. Then your, your mind kind of goes off and, and, and all these tangents, um, that eventually get pulled back into some form of an idea. Uh, but for me, it always starts with the who, and then kind of like the, where do I want to take them? Like, what's that transformation look like? Yep. And that really comes down to like, what's this dent we want to make in the universe. Right. So collectively the, this thing, you know, in your mind jumps to a lot of places, like, who else do I want to involve in this? Who do I want to do this with? And where are we going to do this? How are we going to do this? Is this going to be, you know, a software thing? Is it going to be a people thing? What, what are we building? Is it product? Is it service? And [00:03:00] so you go through all of this, this exploration around some of the what, but like at the very, very core of it, it goes back to like, but why this, why this as opposed to anything else I could do. Yep. Right. And, and that's often, sometimes it just dies right there. It's like, you know what, actually, no, I don't, there isn't enough of a why here. Right. And so, you know, you might see the opportunity, there might be financial upside in it or whatever, but if the why isn't there, because I think you and I have done this enough that we know that at some point you get to the middle of this journey and you don't have your why, and the universe is punching you in the face with every possible downside that comes with the startup. And you're like, I don't remember why I'm doing this. It gets real easy to pull the, like, fuck this rip cord and just bail out. Right. So for me, the why is like, it is the driving force at the early stage, because it's all that exists. Right. And you're fired up about it, right? It's something that you want to bring into the world, right? To the point of annoyance to everyone who's a first or second degree connection. Yeah, big [00:04:00] time. And no one else gets it, right? No, never. It's something where you also want to build something for yourself, for yourself, for your family, you know, you know, whoever's important to you. Part of that imagination, right? You see the Superbowl version of it too, right? Which is like, it's going to be this, it's going to be that. It's going to be amazing. Right. And then you create that version of that, but in the early days, like in the four formative days, you get this vision in your head and you can't let it go. That's, that's, what's so exciting. It's so awesome about what we do, right? And when you talk to founders in year one, they are beaming. With that exuberance of their why they almost shut up about it, right? That's so awesome. But then it almost feels like a malady of sorts, right? You know, when we talk about that, we talk about like, you know, catching the startup bug or the entrepreneurial bug. And it really does feel like that because it starts to feel like this compulsion from inside. It's like, I can't think or talk about anything other than this because I'm so attached to seeing this thing happen. But then you fast forward to like year eight, nine, 10, you say, [00:05:00] what happened again? Like, what happened? What happened? I decide not like what happened to that guy's why? Like in, in that person, that founder is so far removed from that exuberance. Like, like all of that was drained from them. That, that life force of optimism has been drained in so many different ways. And you're like, what happened? And so, in this discussion, what I want us to talk about is how that happened, but more importantly, more importantly, how to get it back, how to get it back. Yeah, I think that's, I think that's critical. I think that's critical because I'm trying to think of a founder that I know who kind of like from inception to wherever it ended up, whether it was success or failure, that didn't lose their why at some point along the journey. I'm not comfortable saying I have an example. I don't, I really don't think I know anybody who was just like, I knew why from the day I started this and all the way through. And now here it is, you know, 20 years later, 10 years later, whatever it is, [00:06:00] didn't lose at least some of that why along the way. And you see this in different facets of life. You see this for couples. Right. You know, they were, they were that, you know, those young lovers, they're the honeymooners there. And then the years later, they're just this old, you know, married couple that are, you know, uh, just roommates. Yeah. Right. And, and, and you look at that and you're like, what happened to, how did that happen? You know, where did they lose their, why now? For founders, it follows a fairly specific and repeatable path. Yeah. But it's a dangerous path. And I think part of that danger is not understanding how it happened and it, and again, it happens in a fairly repeatable way. And let's start there. Let's diagnose. I wanna add, I wanna add one thing to that. Go for it. I wanna add one thing to that, uh, which is that we don't necessarily see or know that it's happening. Ah, right. Yeah. I also think the invisible hand. The invisible hand, but, but I think beyond that, I think we also don't value the why enough, like it starts off and it is the only thing, right? It's the only thing at the beginning. It's [00:07:00] like my, why this is my reason for being is the reason I'm gonna go do this thing. And then at some point it starts to take third, fourth position over some other necessary stuff that are, that's involved with running the business or being run by the business in some cases. So I just, I don't want to lose sight of the fact that I think part of the Is that we don't treat this with enough value as founders ourselves that we're like, yeah, the Y is super important. It was what motivated me to get started, but now I'm into the details. I'm into all the stuff that has to happen. Right. Right. And so it's easy to just let that take, you know, a backseat position. Right. No, I agree. I agree. And in the Y is our superpower. That's why losing it. That's the big problem. So funny. It's so funny about the fact that we devalued at some point. Like it's the whole reason we're here. When I think about companies that lost their Y. I think about Apple. Apple feels so soulless at this point. I think about Google, even Google complains about losing their why. Uh, Eric Schmidt, you know, the former [00:08:00] CEO, uh, not a founder, but a former CEO has been all over social media lately with all kinds of things he's probably not supposed to be saying, talking about how Google has lost its why. Right. It's motivation. He said something in the effect. It wasn't exactly these words. So I'm paraphrasing like they could fire half their staff and it wouldn't make a difference. Right. Which like, yeah, probably not wrong, but like, that's, that's a high degree of apathy. That's what that indicates. That's kind of what he's saying. Right. It's almost a backhanded compliment. He's almost saying the company is so successful that even with half of its staff, it would still be printing money, uh, more money at that point. But what he's saying is like, They've lost like what used to make Google Google, right? Yeah, Apple is a shell of the company. It used to be I'm not knocking Apple I mean like as a company that's run Tim Cook is a phenomenal operator. Yes, but it's not actually great It's sound but it's not yeah It's not it's no longer like the visionary company that it was that brought us things the why we can't imagine not having now Right when he died the why died with it [00:09:00] Um, sadly, um, but, but my point is a company has that DNA to has the Y as founders. It's our job to maintain that and more importantly, bring it back. Not just for the company's sake, for our own sake too. Let's talk about where it gets lost. Cause we'll talk about what gets lost along the way and why it's so important to bring it back. So let's talk about phase one where it starts to go wrong. Okay, sure. We're all fired up. We're all super excited about new idea, but now we have to turn new idea into an actual company. Okay. So it's all great at the idea stage. We're on the whiteboard. We're at the kitchen table, so to speak. And now we've got to make it company. Now we've got to hire fun and games while we're thinking the minute it turns into work. It's a slightly different story. Now we've got to make it a thing. Now we've got to involve other humans. We've got to hire people. We've got to raise some money if that's the case, right? Uh, we've got to build product. Now we've got to create processes. We have to create company. Yeah, that's boring, right? It might be exciting in its own way, but, but what I'm saying is. [00:10:00] The only why involved there is because you kind of have to there's no way around it, right? Again, while some of it's exciting, I mean, you and I, you know, love to build a good process and whatever. The problem, like anything else in life, once you make it real, it starts to become real boring. Yeah. And hang on, because, because I do love to build a process, but I love to build a process with a why behind it. Right. So again, like, even that, like, it's one of the things I think that's where, like, it's such a magical force. The why is such a magical force that can make you do things that otherwise, like, I wouldn't just sit down and decide to create a process, right? I don't want to create a process, but I know that the process is involved in creating the outcome, the dent that I'm trying to create. And so therefore I do. Right. And so I think this is, it's, it's so important that we don't lose sight of this the whole way. Let me give you an example of the first time I saw the why get deteriorated in action. We were, uh, build my first company. And we're starting to step up and at the time, just from like a, a fun, cool environment [00:11:00] standpoint, we're hiring everybody. Everybody's young and everybody's just like, just firing away. Right. Very irresponsible, very immature. Right. And, and, and I'm sure there were all kinds of problems with that. We hired our first adult. In the age requirement to be an adult at that time was 30. It was actually just being an actual adult, like 18 plus year, the adult in the room old enough to rent a car. Right. And I remember them coming in and putting in rules, not like. Crazy corporate rules like rules of being an adult. Yeah, and I remember thinking you just made it less fun Yeah, it's it's now less fun, right? It might have been necessary, but it definitely was probably to be fair It probably was I I won't take anything away from them from doing it Yeah. But I distinctly remember you took away some why. It's one of those first things, because I think, we talked about this a couple weeks ago when we were, when we were going through the episode on losing control and the places that we lose control. Yeah, that's exactly what I was thinking. Right. So I, I think that [00:12:00] there's, there's a corollary here, but in this case, this is one of those first places where we run into a constraint. Correct. Right. And, and it, it has a real impact. Right. And it does. It starts at one. It impacts your energy as a founder. You're like, Oh, when I was just thinking about all this, I could kind of think whatever I wanted. Now that we're doing, there are some real limitations here. Some of those are human. Some of those are just, you know, Physics, there's lots of things that get involved that create these caps for us. But I think that it's one of those moments where it's, it starts to obscure the Y a little bit, right? We start to let what or how get in front of the Y, right? And we start to say, well, the Y is important, but because of how we have to do this, We're gonna deviate a little and it's not necessarily like that the why goes away in that moment I think that's probably the the core part of the discussion today. It's death by a thousand cuts, right? It's just like it's one tiny little cone to paint after the other until you can no longer see the damn thing at all It was a dumb thing too. I remember at the time it was [00:13:00] like on a Friday afternoon Some of the guys like to like pop open a beer And have a beer at like three o'clock in the afternoon in the office, which at the time was unheard of in corporate America, right? Let me say in in in our version of corporate America, maybe the rest of corporate America people were doing it everywhere But in our version from the jobs we had come from it was unheard of not doing it Felt like we were like getting one over on the man Right. And it, we're becoming European. I mean, it was one of the two things. Yeah, we would later learn that all of Europe had figured it out anyway. But then we had it like taken away from us. Right. And again, I know this sounds so minor, but that's actually why I'm bringing it up. Um, and I remember it felt like, huh, well, that feels like less than what we wanted. And to be fair at the time, I was like, yeah, it probably does make sense, et cetera. And I let it go. And maybe that was the right move, but it would become one of many, many of these Thousand paper cuts. That's the thing. Fast forward years later and [00:14:00] there were a million of these restrictions and it wasn't just like, you know, like policy and culture things. It was, it was a million things. And I remember sitting back like, what the hell happened here? Like, we used to have a fun office, we used to have fun clients, we used to have fun work, we used to have a fun product. It's all gone. Not to be taken for granted either, right? Like, a big part of the why for most people is, I do it the way I want to. I have to do it the way I've decided, right? So it's, it's, you know, me do it my way, right? And so when that starts to go away, that's a big piece of the why. I mean, I think in most founders, we were to break it down like, mathematically, wanting to do it. Your way and being able to do it the way you want to do things is probably about a third of the why in the beginning. At some point, I looked around, and even though the company had become very successful, I looked around and I said, Who are the people that I'm working with? What is this product that I'm working with? Who are these clients that I'm working with? What is this industry that I'm working in? Like, who Where the hell did this [00:15:00] office come from? What is this chair I'm sitting in? Like, what the hell happened? How did I get here? Yeah. Right. Yeah. It's, it's funny at some point you just wake up and you really don't recognize things because it's all, it's, it's, it's a bit of, it's the boiled frog syndrome too, right? Which is that everything's kind of changing slowly over time. There are very few of those like big moments where it's all of a sudden like, Whoa, our why was just ripped out of our hands while we were holding onto it so tightly. It's not that at all. It's kind of like one day you You walk in the office, you walk and go like, is that why I know I put it here somewhere. It's got to be like, I thought I put it on the corner of my desk. It's not there anymore. Where is it? I'll find it later. Right. That's what it feels like to me. It's interesting that you said the boil, the frog, that that's really the best way to look at it. And for folks that are just starting out, because I want to address folks at all levels of development in the startup spectrum right now, whether you're in year one or year 10, if you're near one, I want you to think about it right now to say, you know, you're fresh into the idea. Those little decisions that you just compromised on five minutes ago, they're [00:16:00] not little and you're about to make a whole bunch more in every single one of those matters. That little thing of, Hey, let's just not, you know, pop open a beer. I'm making a stupid example intentionally because while that's minor, that's how it starts. 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 day long at 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. It's minor at the time. It's at the time. And it's one of those things where I always think about, you know, that, that old math problem, right? Which is like, if you start off on this flight and you're pointed towards whatever, and you're off by 0. 5 degrees, how far are you off by the time you arrive at the [00:17:00] destination? Right. And so it's a thing where that, that, you know, you may only, it may be a slight deviation from what you were doing, but over time, That deviation from that path, that one or 2%, you end up way wide by the time you're, you're, you're miles and miles and miles away. And so I think that it's one of those things where it doesn't feel consequential at the time. It's kind of like watching founders spend equity, like it's monopoly money going, well, it's worth nothing now. Right. Right. Yeah. But, and you're the one that put this so nicely. Well, which was that. Yes, but it represents 100% of the future value of your company, right? So whatever you're giving up now may seem on, again, consequential, and it is because the difference between $0 and what you just gave up feels like nothing. But if this does become the a hundred million dollars company that you hoped it would be, that 10% you just gave a junior developer to build a crap, first version of your product is now $10 million. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Oops. So these things tend to magnify over time. They tend to grow. The way to get to major compromise is to start with tiny compromise. Right. [00:18:00] And watch it compound. And so again, going back to that spectrum for folks that are in the early stages, I want you to watch these little tiny compromises and I want you to make a big deal out of them, right? For just this reason, for folks that are on the far end of the spectrum that are 10 years in, I want you to look back on all of those tiny compromises you made. And understand how you got here, right? It didn't come from the big decisions. It came from all the tiny ones, right? It starts with things like, well, they're not a great personality fit for what we want to do, but you know, they've got the skillset. But we need to, we need them right now. It's not an ideal client, but we could use the cash. Yep. It's, you know, it's, it's so many things, right? Maybe this software solution isn't exactly what we need, but it'll get us by for now. How bad of a board member could they possibly be? I think. It goes from this, this is, this is where it gets important. It goes from small, seemingly unimportant compromises in the beginning, where we start to chip away from our, why [00:19:00] we built this damn thing to begin with to where it becomes now we're running something for nothing to do with why we built this thing. Let me give you some examples. Now, all of a sudden we're out running around town, trying to pull together a bridge round so that we can make payroll for a company we don't even care about anymore. Right. We're banging our heads against the wall. I've, I've done this. So I got to be clear. Like I'm very familiar with this, right? This is me 2007, 2008, running around trying to raise a second round of capital for, for afforded. com, a company that I didn't even care about at the time because I hated the business. I hated the business model, but I cared about my investors. I cared about the people that I was, that I got into the business with. I don't need clear about that. I just fell into a business model. I didn't like it anymore and absolutely killed myself. Trying to keep the business alive for a business that I didn't even like it anymore. I had lost my why I was gone. Yeah, right. Um, uh, and all of a sudden i'm sitting there going Why am I even doing this anymore? Right in in so many [00:20:00] cases we can create a Monster that owns us right and many of us have many of us are chained to a business That we are running ourselves into the ground trying to service But that very same business which by the way We created We have to go in service nonstop, but over some period of time. We've created this monster. You're no longer running the business. You're no longer running the business. You're running from an outcome within the business that you're scared will happen, right? At that point, you're just running away from things you don't want to happen. You're no longer running towards the thing that you wanted to create in the first place. And, and it's a sad state to see founders. And unfortunately, like I was saying, I feel like most founders get to that point at some point, right? It's not hard to do. I mean, it's not, no, it's harder not to. And then at some point they, they do find their way back. But let's talk about that because that's, that's really what we wanted to sit down and talk about. This isn't about the fact just that we get there. I mean, that's honestly, it's, it's pretty common. Let's [00:21:00] talk about how we get back. Let's talk about how we reverse this course. Okay. I think the first part of this diagnosis, if you want to call it, that is first recognizing that it happened at I feel like by the time we get here, We feel like it's a terminal diagnosis that, that, that we can't recover from. I'm thinking about this. Like I'm thinking about how often recently I've asked because, you know, look, startups get hard, they get really hard. And so one of my favorite things to ask people to remotivate them is why did you set out to do this in the first place? And they all have an answer for it. But what's funny now that I'm thinking about it, there's a consistent response. Which is, oh, right. If there's like this moment where like they lean back and they're just like, Oh fuck that. Yeah. Yeah. The reason why, oh yeah, the why I started, well, that was so long ago or so far from where we are and what we're doing now that it almost feels irrelevant. They have to go through that moment of like, shit. Yeah. We're a long way from that. And then as we work back through it and then we get there, like it's, it's not the kind of thing that you [00:22:00] just forget. You just forget to service it. You forget to live through it, right? It's there. You remember why, but somewhere along the way, you forgot to make that a present part of what you're doing. You bet. I think the first thing that we lose, the first casualty of this, is forgetting that we're entitled to our why. We built this goddamn thing. Yep, right. It's ours. For that purpose, right? By the way, we built this so that we could have that why. So that it could be the thing that built something for our family. So that it could be the thing that helped the people we wanted to help. So we could do it our way. Right, right. That's why we did this. We didn't build this as a self torture machine for the anxiety inducing self stress machine that it has become, right? At no point were we sitting in our bedroom late at night going, I wonder what I could do to create the most amount of long term stress that would ruin all of my personal relationships, drain me of all my personal wealth, and set my health back 10 to 20 years. Oh, [00:23:00] I know! What product could I launch? Yes. Oh my god. That was not what we set out to do, and yet here we are, right? When I say there's the entitlement there, we somehow feel like we are absolutely entitled to all the bad shit, but somehow we're not entitled to the good shit, right? Oh yeah. And part of this is that reset mechanic. To say, hey dude, You've already paid your dues in the bad stuff, time to cash in on the good stuff too. And when I talk to founders who, you know, Ryan, you do too, who've already been through the bad stuff. Ryan, you and I have paid our dues 900 times over. The bad stuff, right? Yeah. So, I don't think there's a lot of Got all those trophies. Yeah, I was gonna say, I don't think there's a lot of convincing that needs to be done there. The convincing is on the good stuff, right? Like, it's payback time. And so I think part of that is again a true understanding kind of the catharsis there to say You know, that's true. I have [00:24:00] paid some dues there I do need to get back to some why because here's what I would say If not now, when? And if I don't, what was the point? What's the point? Yeah, you know, it's interesting, man. Because the why fades so slowly over time. Yeah. Death by a thousand cuts. I think that one of the challenges is that we forget what a good feeling it is just to have it. Right. Just to bring the Y back into focus, just that, right. Even before you begin to like do things that actually live it out, just by bringing it back into focus has a huge benefit, but I think that one of the challenges that we face when we're talking to founders on a, on a daily basis. Try to bring them back to that. Why is that because it faded so slowly over time, they don't have a good strong memory of how great that felt right there. More recent memories are kind of like, yeah, you know, it was there, you know, it was a little bit, but yeah, I remember it. So I think that that's one of the big challenges that like the dopamine hit the big, like all that euphoria that we talked about at the beginning that's, that surrounds [00:25:00] that actually does come back. Yep. But because we've, we've let it go over such a long period of time, we don't remember that. And so the incentive or the drive to bring it back feels Somehow like it lacks the value or like, like, well, I could do that. I could refocus on my why, but why, why would I do that? When I could just go fix that thing that's broken, fire, that person needs to be fired, hired those two people that need to be hired. All of that other practical shit that gets in the way of our why. And you couple that with the thing that you're talking about, which is that we just don't feel like we deserve that, right? Like that level of satisfaction just because, um, just because this is why we built it in the first place. So don't forget that. And I think that's part of the complication, right? We just don't have. The enough muscle memory around how it felt to want to bring it back. And to me, that's super sad. It's also, it's, it's a hurdle we can leap. And then you and I help people do it all the time. So let's isolate that part of it is just bringing it back. Literally just bring it to the forefront first to ourselves, first to ourselves, right. To be able to remind ourselves why we did this to begin with. And again, I think there are personal goals [00:26:00] there. I think there are company goals there. I think there are product goals there. You know, there are all kinds of those things, but again, bringing it back. Also, with that, some things to remind yourself what you didn't start this with. Yes. I didn't start this so I could be in political battles with people all damn day. Right? I didn't start this so I could ruin my health, or start a divorce. Or, you know, you name all the things, right? I did not start it for these reasons, right? And these things are happening. And so, you know, I need to address these things. Another side of it would be I need to talk to my team and remind them why we did this. Yeah. Or even be told in the first place, depending on their, on their vintage, right, their tenure, how long they've been there. Because again, it, it fades over time. I, you know, it's, it's one of the things I think you've done a particularly great job of as we've hired people over time at startups is that we haven't lost that, like that you do introduce that piece. Like here's the, why we're building this thing. And I think that's super important because it's, that is one of probably the first casualties. As it starts to become obscured from us, the founder, it certainly [00:27:00] becomes obscured to everyone else at a much higher rate to the point where they don't know like employee 1000 at Google may have known some of the why. Yeah. Employee 45, 000 probably had no idea. Probably no one told them. Here's why we built this thing. They're like, okay, cool. I don't even care. It's funny. You should say, I kind of forgot that I do that. But a lot of times when I do my intro, like on my workshops, like I'm going to do a funding workshop here in a couple hours, uh, with, with our community. One of the things I mentioned is that this is my dream job. I just get to sit around clients, right? Yeah. Yeah. I, I tell our, our, our clients, our customers, our founders, I say, this is my dream job. I just get to sit around and bullshit with founders all day. It's why I started this. And that is my, why that this is the best part of mom, about my job is I just get to sit around and bullshit with founders. I tell people if you love sports. This would be ESPN. Like this is our podcast right now. Same with this last night in the whole time that we've been doing this podcast, it's never occurred to me why we do this podcast. Like at no point did you and I ever [00:28:00] really sit down and come up with like a business narrative or use case of why to do the podcast. No, we just started recording it. For years and years and years and hundreds and hundreds of episodes. And at no point have we really sat down and said, okay, well, like, you know, why are we doing this? Or, you know, what's the narrative, et cetera. We just kind of did it. I think we knew it aligned with our why. Yeah. And so we just recorded it. Right. That's it. I think that was because our why was still present. We didn't have to question all that. Right. It just, it was like, yeah, this fits, this falls in with the greater why we don't have to ask why specifically about this thing. I think that's one of those things that's so important about this entire concept. Is that when you keep it front and center, things tend to be built with alignment in the moment. When you don't, then you end up with things like the pivot or the, you know, the reallocation of resources or all these other shitty business processes that we end up having to go through because at some point we realize we built the wrong thing, right? Or we built it in the wrong way. [00:29:00] We built it with the wrong people or for the wrong people. Because we lost sight of that. I remember specifically it's like one moment in time we're at a board meeting. This is when we were running the ad agency and the agency had become pretty big, we were at about 700 million in revenue at this time, and we're at one of a gazillion board meetings and in the board meeting, the board meeting is different in this case, because there were just officers of the company that owned the board meeting. We were a private company. We didn't have shareholders. And I remember I asked the board. I said, every one of these board meetings is about HR or company structure or finances or whatever. I was like, you know, we haven't had a single board meeting about creative and we're a goddamn ad agency. We're agency. Yeah. We've literally never thought it might be important. We've literally never talked about our actual creative product in a single board meeting for like years. Um, the why just gets taken for granted at some point. It's like that, it's like that, you know, that sweet friend who's always there for you. Even when you ignore them and forget about them and leave them behind. And it's [00:30:00] like, man, just take care of that thing in a weird way. If you didn't know we were a creative agency and you sat in those meetings, you'd have no idea that we actually created creative for a living. It never came up. And look, I mean, there was business purpose for that, but that went back to my earlier point in that the why. You know, of we're going to build great creative got lost in the business of creating great, so necessary, right? You have to have that because it contextualizes all of those other business purposes, right? Because without that, then the business can, can take on counter purposes, right? You got things just start to branch off and go in different ways. How often do you see that? Where like, Silly, silly stuff, just like misalignment between sales and marketing. Right? Two departments that should be really easy to keep in lockstep because they're so closely aligned with what they do, and yet, when you lose that why, those things again, starts with just a couple degrees of separation, and then before you know it, you can barely see each other over the horizon. I think, okay, bringing back the why, I think what we have to do when we start to bring it [00:31:00] back, Is we have to start to isolate and say, where is it being lost? It's not this one big global thing. We have to assign if we, if we're really militant about it, we start to look across the organization and we start to assign not blame, but course correction. Where in the organization is it getting lost? Cause that. Right. Right. Where is it getting lost? Okay. Sometimes that that's in reporting structure. Right. In other words, like, Oh man, like I, I handed essentially culture and that's what got lost to HR and HR just whitewashed the whole thing. Right. It happens, right. It does. Bob HR. Yeah. Not blame me HR, but you know, I'm just saying, right. Or I handed this role like product, like think of Steve jobs back in his day. If he had handed product, right. Not that he ever would, but like had handed product to someone else. And that person kind of lost the why, you know, made not Steve Jobs level kind of ballsy decisions, right? I'd still be typing on a clicky keyboard on a phone, [00:32:00] you know, exactly right. You had a trio, but like, uh, it's things like that where you can start to look and say, yeah, well, shit. Like that's, that's where the, why got lost? Like you can triangulate and start to say, ah, okay. There are people in places and processes. Where y got lost and you can try to recapture some of that now i'll say this Sometimes Y is goddamn gone, right? Sometimes Y is dead and buried, and it ain't coming back, right? So, so the, it can't always come back. It does happen. And sometimes you gotta let it go. I see founders that, that look, look around. I was one of them. And say, you know what? Ain't coming back. Time to move on, go build something else. I did it nine times. So, I'm quite familiar with that process. And that's okay too. Sometimes the, the fastest way to regain it is start something new. Yeah, just start something new. Go back to a new why. Yeah, I think it depends on, I think it depends a lot on, on why it died and, and like what sort of effort it takes to bring it back. One of the things I like to do is just kind of simplify this exercise for founders. If you're [00:33:00] thinking about what we're talking about right now and you're trying to decide like, okay, how do I go and find this stuff again? Two places I start just super, super basic, right? And we talk about this quite a lot on the podcast in different contexts. But first I look at the things like, what are the things that we're doing that I wish we weren't doing? All right. What are the things that we've started to do by virtue of becoming the company that we are now by being run by the market or customers or staff or whatever it was where we lost control and we ended up having to do stuff we don't do. What are those things? Yep. What are the things that we wish we weren't doing? Right. Because it will almost always map back to some divergence from our why. Then I, then I look at the things and I say, okay, what is it that I want to be doing that we're currently not? Are we in an office when we wish we were remote, right? Are we servicing corporate clients when we wish we were working with, with small business or startup founders? Are we, you know, hiring people left front and center? We have no connection to that aren't improving the culture instead of just building software that could do the same thing or vice versa. We build software and take the heart out [00:34:00] of the company and we should have made it more So what are those things that we're not doing that we wish we were? And for me, then like the gaps that appear in those things. inform the process that you just described, which is then I start to go look in the organization and say, okay, where is the responsibility for this? Where do these things initiate? Where does the process break? How far down the food chain do I have to go to find where this begins to bubble up? Is it top down? Is it bottom up? Yep. And that makes the exercise a lot easier for me because I think that if we leave it like this kind of amorphous, just start to go look around the organization and see where things are off the rails. Unfortunately, every time I start to do that, You find things that are off the rails, but what do you find first? It's not the symptomatic stuff around the why. It's, it's the business processes. It's the, well, this person's just not doing the thing right. And then you get caught up again in the what, the how, the who, instead of the why. And so that's why I always try to start with those things in mind. And if I can have my north star and my, my south pole, which is the things I want to do and the things I don't, that makes it far easier for me to then enter into the, the brutal exploration of like, okay, now how do we [00:35:00] bring it back? I agree. And I think, again, we deserve to bring it back. We're entitled to our why. Say that again. There's a whole. We'll say that again. We deserve to bring it back. We're entitled to our work. You heard it here. You heard it here. Go bring it back. But that's the thing. Like, it's our job, as much as it was to us to start this thing, it's also our job to bring it back. Again, you know, going back to our man, Steve Jobs, he kind of did that with Apple. He did exactly that, right? He got booted out and he brought it right back, right? And built, you know, Storming back in. Yeah, exactly. Leading with the Y, by the way, right? That's, it's a full case study in this. Exactly. Uh, he brought it back. And so here's what I would say for all of us. It is a constant battle to maintain the Y. It is damn near impossible to keep it going the entire time. It is hard as hell. It is a full time battle to keep the Y front and center, right? And it will slip for many of us. It slipped a long way, but for all of us, it's our job to bring it back. We owe it to ourselves and to some degree we owe it to the company. Okay to bring the why full front [00:36:00] and center make it part of our dna keep it part of our dna Enforce function that thing the entire way to build the company and keep the company for what it was meant to be from day One 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 bootstrapped founders and the advisors helping them win in the startups. com community. Check out the startups. com community at www. startups. com to see if it's for you. Could be just the thing you need. I hope to see you inside.