Kress's Corner #4 - How to grow a Startup from 5 to 100 people?

welcome everyone to Chris's corner I think this is number four we have a Nicholas herringer here to talk about his business his uh exact coaching business um so finally a fourth installment I've been a little bit on Hiatus doing other things focusing my attention on on uh money generating things versus doing these interviews but we'll bring them back I have a few others um so quickly you know this goal my goal of these things is basically to talk to companies and people that I know and and learn something about what they do and how it impacts the industry hopefully it's not going to be too much PR fluff although I've got some critical response that some of it was a little bit too pre so I'm not I'm going to avoid that trying to anyway going forward um so anyway I have Nicholas and Nicholas uh has a really interesting background and he actually does really

interesting stuff in my view um he is a executive coach for basically startups both like CEOs and ctOS and you know c-level execs kind of like in the early growth stage so between you know starting at five to like 100 people um so we're gonna just talk about the key obstacles and challenges of of these CEOs and ctOS um you know we've been friends for quite a while I think since covid um if I remember correctly we uh he reached out and said hey is there anyone that wants to get to get together Brave the disease disease City and go out for lunch or something like that I'm like sure get me the [ __ ] out of my basement so I hooked up with them we went dinner uh lunch in the in the in Noe Valley um we both have a passion for cars we drive almost every month uh to on the Kirby's up in Marin and cause some

trouble there most likely ultimately one of us is going to get arrested one day for running over these stupid Marin bikers out there but not so far so good so anyway I've known him for quite a while um Nicholas what do you got to say how's everything with you and uh tell me a little bit about yourself and your coaching practice well hello everyone and thanks for having me uh Eric um yeah what is there to say that you have not already covered um maybe a little bit of background you know used to be a lawyer started a mobile game studio afterwards uh then I founded Gondola platform for dynamic pricing and offer optimization and free-to-play games that we sold to tilting point in 2019 and since then I've worked with Founders on scaling their companies you know usually somewhere from a team of five to a team of 100 and I've also become an active angel investor um so that's where I'm at right now

well we'll hang out a lot or once you know periodically we actually went out to dinner with the with the wives the other night which was quite cool and something I haven't done I think in like a decade since the kids were born more than a decade um but you know we rarely talk about your business uh because yeah well you didn't talk about cars and other stuff yeah that's true yeah exactly um so I'm actually kind of interested to hear what you have to say and one of the things that's and this is I know is a bit of an antagonistic question to start off the gate but you know one of the questions I have is like you know my business makes sense right so I provide information to my clients to give them an edge in the market if I do if I am right they do well and if I don't they kick me to the curb you know our incentives are aligned more or less right with with coaching and similar it's like even lawyering to some degree uh but the coaching in particular

you know I could see how it's valuable for coaches don't get me wrong I I I see the value in what you do for Founders and execs right but the incentives don't seem to be aligned in my view like for you you want to charge them as much money as possible for as many hours as possible Right but they want to get the answers and the solution as fast as possible so that just seems really problematic at best you know like what am I missing here like aren't they after like quick Solutions and quick answers to their questions and doesn't that not align with the fact that you want to charge them Oodles of money you know hours oh okay a couple of interesting thoughts here and a couple of assumptions so so the first one I want to you know differentiate coaching is not Consulting coaching doesn't mean you know somebody shows up and it's like hey I have problem X you know I got to fix my user acquisition Channel you know tell me what to do and then you know somebody goes you know and crunches a bunch of numbers and comes up with a fancy PowerPoint and then says okay here you

know this is this is the prescribed solution you know now pay me um coaching is much more about you know growing uh in your role you know personally as as a Founder as an exec uh in order to become better and more efficient at what you do which very much translates into a better and more efficient organization because you are the lead of that organization so that's one thing as as far as the misaligned incentives I see what you mean you said like hey don't you have a motivation to drag them along for as long as possible is that a fair statement basically yeah yeah a psychologist model basically yeah on the psychology I'll fix you but I won't fix you you know that sort of thing like I'll dangle that you're getting better carried in front of you but you're not quite there yet so you still need me right that that kind of an idea exactly yeah so um interesting uh my response to that you know before we get into more details I guess uh you know what I do is that's kind of like saying that the doctor has an interest in his patient not getting

better right so I think first of all that's a relatively cynical approach um besides from a business perspective going back to the doctor example the doctor is probably way better off building a great reputation and attracting more patients and other opportunities you know maybe speaking opportunities or Consulting Geeks or whatever it is then he would be trying to juice every last dollar out dollar out of his existing patients and that's the same for me you have to consider that the majority of my business is is built on reputation recommendations on Word of Mouth right I don't run you know uh uh campaigns out there you know there's no Performance Marketing for coaching it's not how it works it's essentially you do a good job and then people talk and then you know you get more clients and more opportunities um also I tell my clients in the very beginning you know when I start working with them that my goal is to make myself Obsolete and quite frankly when I do so

you know when I say yo you're perfectly fine on your own you know go ahead um that's a very satisfying feeling so I don't know if that answers your question but um that's my response to your suspicion no well it kind of answers my questions I I don't know if I agree with you on the uh on the on the doctor thing I think doctors are nowadays like more about churning and burning but but I think I understand what you're saying so let's dig in a little bit like what is it exactly that you think um that what are like the big challenges that you see with execs starting these founding companies because the the one thing that that's clear to me is that there are so many more startups in the gaming space right now so the opportunity seems to be relatively large for you but now like with all those companies like going after the same type of market like what are the biggest challenges that they these companies are seeing when they're growing from from just like the startup phase the seed funding to you know a round you know from five to 100 people

and so if we if we leave the business challenges you know in the gaming world and in the macroeconomic world aside so just like from a you know coaching Founders and Executives perspective you know what what are the main challenges that I encounter um the first one always is focus and that sounds like uh yeah you know what what's the news here but it's very very easy and I'm also you know speaking from personal experience having been in that founder seat for a decade actually a little more even um it's very easy to get carried away um especially you know if you're flush with cash but even without right so they're they're a a lot of uh you know things to try out and to sniff out and so it's what I see a lot is people working on too many things simultaneously you know distractions spreading themselves and their resources and their their teams too thin um what you really want to do is you want

to have a hypothesis which is what every you know companies pretty much build around um and then you want to get as fast as you can to some sort of a prototype that you can get feedback on quickly and then you want to gather data and then you want to iterate so first thing is focus focus on one thing and don't try to build three things at the same time you look puzzled well I guess part of my when when you say stuff like that that doesn't seem like the personality type of someone that's going to start a company right do they have that kind of focus and drive are they more creative and you know Visionary and moving from things to things right so isn't that a tough ask for people that were are kind of in that mold of people that do startups well what assumptions are you making about a Visionary founder I mean I think of people like uh Pinkus Pinkus is always the big best example in the gaming space because he saw lots of success but ultimately abject failure

right so but he's a Visionary and he was all over the place like you know it's like I don't know if he could be focused in in an hour much less a day or a week you know so it's like and I don't know him personally but that's what I've been told anyway but like I I find these like creatives like kind of like all over the place hard for them to focus is that a problem or is that is that just my false assumption well I think the the both the the first assumption that I think you're making is that we are talking about single single Founders right you know one guy driving the entire thing uh most successful companies and I have to admit I obviously know who Mark Pincus is and I've met him but uh I don't know if they were co-founders at Zynga but I'm pretty sure they were so usually there is a division of labor in the sense you need one guy that is the Visionary absolutely you know somebody who's you know has the pie in the sky idea and you know can sell this very well and and is is

inspiring to people and investors and all of that but you also certainly need an operator and somebody to reel that Vision in and said okay I know this all sounds great but you know what is the first step towards uh making that Vision a reality and also what is the first hypothesis that we have to prove or or disprove in order to see if we can go somewhere um so I don't think it's that black and white um with Visionaries but but speaking of Team uh another thing that is really really crucial um you know for exacts and Founders and what they do is is the whole idea of weight distribution right uh it's obvious but sometimes people forget you know Founders can't succeed alone they need a team you know they need a bunch of hands on deck um but there's a progression over time you know early on when you're like two guys in the garage you don't really have any choice but to own all aspects of your business right I mean you're the Visionary and you're the guy that goes to the post office and everything else in between

as the company grows this becomes a problem a Founder that's involved in everything that the company does um eventually um becomes the primary bottleneck of his own organization because you know this is like this impasse that everything has to go through you know all of the decisions you know all of the the processes everything has to go through a Founder um but most Founders realize this way too late right so they are in this growth phase and they've just grown their team from I know what 15 employees in in January to you know 50 employees so 5-0 in December and all of a sudden you know it's just like wow we don't have the structure to support this and also everything is still going through me and then to undo this is is quite hard so generally that's the the weight distribution and not becoming the bottleneck of your own organization that's a challenge I see with almost I don't want to say everyone I work with but 75 of the people I work with or have worked with

um the last one that uh especially with technical Founders but in general is is oftentimes you know not totally clear to them is the need to master human relationships so um again Founders can't succeed alone and and oftentimes it's oh yeah he he or she is a great communicator right as an oh yeah if you can talk well and all that that will solve the problem but in reality that's only part of it if you want to get people to the Pinnacle of their abilities and build the best possible team and most importantly you know take your vision going back to the Visionary and push this forward you have to genuinely connect to them right you have to enable them uh to connect to others and there is this idea that you have to you know give them a safe space um so that you can melt their defenses and essentially you know really tap into all of the resources that they have hmm probably feels like there's a lot of

feeling involved here definitely out of my wheelhouse for sure you know is this like is this actually necessary I mean can't you run it like a you know uh an army or like a platoon as opposed to this Kumbaya [ __ ] where you're like communication or is it is that that's why I'll never be a successful entrepreneur uh lots of things here but the first thing I want to say is I knew this was going to be fun because you were not gonna have some of the things you know that I do or say but I clearly do not have a lot of these skill sets that is no well it was skill sets also but I mean you you just brought UPS like you know why don't we just run this you know purely purely based on hierarchy you know use the general you know here are a couple Lulu tenants and and the rest is you know the platoon and they are just just go out and told as you are do right that's essentially what you do and and we let the numbers uh determine um you know if we're doing well or not um there are a lot of different ways to

do things and there are absolutely you know successful companies out there that were or are still being run on that concept um I usually don't find this you know most efficient and I have seen this you know attempt fail several times well the other one especially in an early stage company when you're so dependent on the people and then on everyone pulling their weight um uh I think it you know I I prefer the you know let's play together rather than let me tell you what it is that you have to do and afterwards shut up I I prefer that approach um what you have to consider is this humans are super diverse right and especially programmers will always tell you hey you know what I really love about a machine is you know I put in an input and I know the programming language and it's very predictable for me for the how the machine will react and then you know with humans especially I say the exact same thing to 10 different people and I

get 15 different reactions and that kind of like freaks me out um but humans also all run on a very similar programming language and and and part of that language is that we all have basic needs right we all want to feel safe we all want to feel seen and we all want to feel hurt including you Eric right that is uh that even applies to Eric Cress and so once these basic needs are met you're no longer in Conflict mode you're no longer defensive and as a result your abilities get a huge boost you become better at pretty much everything you know taking in information learning new things taking risks you know dealing with conflict just to name a few so people really open up and that means um that they are much more creative which is particularly important for the gaming industry um they're more efficient and they can pivot and adapt much quicker you know take somebody else's thought or product and go run with it so if you're thinking about growing from Five People You know to 100 people those are very important aspects um

you know I actually did a quick search just this in this moment what CEOs have led by fear right what are the top CEOs the left by fear you know what the first one was Steve Jobs it should have been but it was uh I thought it was gonna be Steve Jobs when it was like Weinstein but that's not like what we're here to talk about no but the second the second one you know who it was Mark Pincus it should have been Steve Jobs right so like I what I would what I would counter your argument with is like look if you have all these like wannabe CEOs that want to be like leaders of industry building their own companies and they have these type of people that are their mentors or that they look up to particularly jobs you know it's like I mean don't people take the mentality of just running a tight ship running a platoon as opposed to I mean Larry Ellison was was Notorious right for being a screamer Pinkus was a screamer

right and uh micromanager um but anyway all right we'll go no no I I have to just quickly respond to the Steve Jobs thing so I think Steve Jobs very much checks your box of you know the being the great Visionary and and having a little bit of a yo I I know better in my way or the highway approach and he obviously was really really successful at that because he could just see around corners that other people couldn't see around right so we can absolutely agree on that um and that's what people admire him for and you know try to emulate him and you know speaking of the mentor and you know and this is who you look up to um pretty much everyone you talk to says yeah yeah but you know he was a tricky person to deal with you know anybody who read the biography or all that say that so I think there there's a differentiation here going on people absolutely loved his his vision and his you know sense for product um you don't hear so many people say oh he was such a fantastic manager of a publicly traded company at least I haven't come across them got it all right so in your view then

after I've come you know talk about the bad guys uh what are the key characteristics of you know Founders um that are successful there are lots but I I'm gonna mention the ones that I think apply to you regardless of you know what it is that you do so first of all you need confidence right um for others to passionately follow your path you must be confident in Your Vision you must be willing to you know indulge in in in in your um in your own thinking and and quite frankly if you don't believe yourself what it is that you're doing that no one else will now you guys say yes that's really obvious but you come across Founders sometimes that you know lack that um what has to go along with this is humility um and I know that sounds mutually

exclusive but let me explain what I mean you humility enables you to not fall into the I know it all trap right like the the the Arrogant you're shaking your head again come on I just this one I don't I don't I I don't see but uh but I'll let you continue absolutely all right you know give me the the pushback uh in a minute but so humility allows you to grow and see additional perspectives it allows you to challenge your own assumptions other people's assumptions um to open up to honest feedback and understand what the data tells you so maybe to bring this to something that might resonate more with you unless you have humility you're not going to be open to feedback whether it's in feedback by numbers or feedback by people telling you about your product about your leadership style doesn't matter now would you agree with me that unless you are open um to you know taking in you know numeric feedback or

or um for anybody who's listening Eric just had a cat run over his desk so uh slightly distracting no but for anybody to you know improve and get better at what they do and nobody figures out you know the perfect product or the perfect leadership style right away you have to be open to feedback and unless you have a certain level of humility you're not going to be able um to take that in does that make sense uh I I I what I think is that you may have humility from the perspective I don't know a lot of these people that I'm come across that have been successful don't have a lot of humility in the moment but maybe you have humility you know when they when they have time to think about things so they're given lots of inputs and then they kind of recycle that and then they come back with with revised kind of uh picture but so I think they're defensive right at

first there is like a lot of pushback and arguing back then three days later they might come back and say yeah you know I I took this in and I said right yeah would you say that reminds you of yourself occasionally a little like oh all the time right all the time yeah yeah 100 I mean okay I mean well my personality on the podcast is quite a bit different than my personality with client contacts and clients so like I do take in a lot and listen more than I do on the podcast for sure so um but yeah everything I tell everyone I talk to affects my my my my decision my my thought process on things yeah without going off on a tangent I've had many you know encounters with you you know whether it it where we had a difference of opinion a different point of view whatever you know including business you know where you first push back a lot and then later on thought like oh yeah I thought about this um and also on the podcast you know more than once I have heard you start you know the subsequent week by saying like

hey I gotta come clean here I said X and Y and Z last week you know and I got pushed back on that or somebody called me or whatever and you know I was you know I was wrong about that so um you know I I think you are uh yeah I just don't think I don't think execs like to show weakness like that's your suggestion but humility is not weakness and making yourself vulnerable but I but I just perceive this weakness all right let's move on yeah okay I disagree with that statement it's not um other things very obvious tenacity yo whatever you think how hard this is and how long it will take it will always be multiples of that and anybody who's ever started a company and certainly be people that have started multiple companies will confirm that whatever you envision it's gonna be worse and harder and take longer so you have to be able to endure a lot of setbacks and disappointments over and over and over

again to have a shot yeah that that makes total sense what else you got so um motivations uh what's your motivation to get into this um you come across people that think oh my God you know like starting a company is so cool you know I'm gonna do this and you know I'm gonna own the whole thing and I'm gonna be super rich you know five years down the road and yes that is uh that is you know making a whole bunch of money is is is is a you know very understandable motivation uh that that pretty much everyone who you know becomes an entrepreneur has but in order to be successful you know if you're just setting out and you want to make a quick Buck um that's not a good way to you know get there and actually you know have the Big Exit and make a whole bunch of money you need to be driven by the right goals um and the right goal especially early on is usually that you want to create something in order to solve a problem that's what drives you because the status quo drives you nuts because you think you know what people are doing right now is is so stupid and

inefficient and something and there could be a way better product or service game whatever it is you know to um to to solve that um and you just have to take on this challenge because it's just like it just drives you mad um and it's almost like one of those things that you're so interested in and so passionate about that you would happily work on it for free for a while while um just because I got it so you're basically trying to solve a problem I'll get it what's next as opposed to just trying to kind of trying to become rich one more that I would mention here before we move on is conflict resolution you know people always say oh I've known the guy for five years is also great there will always be conflict there will be conflict between the founders there will be conflict with board members with investors with a team with your customers with everyone around you there will be conflict so that is not avoidable um and so the big question is how do you deal with conflict right do you shy away do you love a good fight you know is it something in between are you trying to

win you know every argument for the sake of winning um those are all the right questions and one of the crucial um characteristics of successful Founders is that um they are good at dealing with conflict on all different levels would you like consider this conflict like political conflict that sort of thing like feeling part of relationships yeah I mean this is where I failed miserably because I just don't like dealing with so I don't know I don't want to make this all about me but like this is why this is what it's like dealing with like all these different personalities and being all Kumbaya and trying to get everyone on the same page and align that's that like it doesn't even make sense to me and I and I would push back a little bit on this one too I think a lot of times people run things as as as uh you know totalitarian leaders right and they just mow through people you know you don't like it [ __ ] get there's the door you know like and so I don't

know that that time even if that was true okay so maybe this is you know you can rule when the Iron Fist you know internally but didn't you just say two minutes ago hey you know my personality towards my clients is a little different than towards my you know like that than it is on the podcast right so you cannot really rule with an iron fist you know and also like yeah if you're an executive but you can't do that with your board right if you have investors that are VCS you're not gonna be just you know blasting them I get it all right all right well I I guess the last thing about that if if we back into this like what's the most efficient and successful it makes the most money and all of that the Iron Fist approach I mean yeah maybe you if you're running a sweatshop in a you know certain country around the world and uh um you know and and you have 10 000 people that do the exact same thing all day long and it's just like faster faster faster okay but if you try trying for to for example to create a game

company um I would challenge it but in any way let's move on so I'll say what the more thing about this I and I know I'm talking about more bigger companies I think probably it's part of my my my focus here is like so like apple for instance like every story I hear about Apple is basically the same is that they're basically six people in Cupertino that run that whole company right and if you go off the rails in any way they're coming after you right so what they are worried most about even at the senior senior exec level is that they get a call from one of those six people or said email saying hey this advertisement was [ __ ] wrong this product announcement was wrong the communication was wrong and so like I I think stock jobs just basically created that culture within that company and I think that that's what I'm talking about it's like it's all fear in a lot of ways right it's a you know like you know you're just you're on Razor's Edge constantly and so like I don't know I don't know if that's the right way I mean clearly Apple's been one of the most successful companies in the world right but like anyway so well

two things about that first of all um requirements and challenges in a publicly traded hundred thousand people company very different from what you asked me about you know like how do you get to 100 people early on that's number one and number two is um so the more political the environment becomes the more individuals are going to be focused on doing stuff that makes them look good and covers their ass rather than pushing the business forward that I believe is pretty much always true and yes it's hard to avoid that completely when a company you know grows beyond a certain size but there are definitely companies where this happens more and less and I don't think it's good for business but that's just me all right so what are the characteristics then of Founders that you find fail in their uh aspirations to build a company from five to one hundred

well aside from lacking the things that I described before uh once again attitude and arrogance right I know it all I'm the best this is easy who the [ __ ] are you right like pretty much what you just described before you know my way or the highway don't question me just do as you're told I am the general you're nothing um that's a recipe for failure because and I think I think fundamentally you and I disagree on this point but I think I agree on the rest but but we don't need to keep going out all right we don't need to keep feeding that dead horse um micromanagers is I think something that you um that you mentioned earlier uh I remember hearing the term so the type of lead that can help himself but get involved in everything every process every decision um and and there's always like the pretentiousness around it like so they pretend to take people off the leash it's like hey here you know you yeah right now but then you know the marketing team is having the zoom call and then oh I'm just you know while I'm

eating my Ramen news I'm just casually gonna dial in and listen to it no no just ignore me I'm just a fly on the wall right um nothing there nothing's more like dehumanizing than that kind of micromanagement yeah and what happens so exactly and what so what happens if you dehumanize people that work for you yeah what happens yeah they're bail they don't want to they don't want to be well first of all the performance suffers and eventually they say [ __ ] this I'm gonna do something else all right what else have we got um also was mentioned before you know uh shitty communicators but I think I want to approach this more from the angle from the angle of a lack of transparency right so you like there's the exact team is keeping everything very close to their chest right and nobody knows where they are as far as you know how much money we've left in the bank how much revenue we are making you know what the numbers were for last week you know what the goal is what the product plan is what the vision is you know they all just get you know like this pigeonhole

view of this one thing that you do and other than that shut up and uh so nobody knows what the big game plan is except for a very select few and um and and so two things happen the one thing is uh they don't really know what's going on it's not very um motivating or um you know if you don't have any context on you know why this task right now matters the other thing that's going on is the lack of transparency and the less information they have the more they start speculating you know the more stuff happens to the Grapevine and stories come out and all of that and um that's generally not good for a coherent team so you might think oh I'm doing them a favor by not disclosing that things are hard right now but guess what people can tell things are not going well you probably just based on your body language right unless you're like a master spy you won't be able to hide it so might as well come clean and make them part of the solution that's the much better approach um but yeah I see that a lot the last thing is obvious but

you know people start companies and areas where they have no true domain expertise or you know relevant experience you know I'm just doing this thing because it's damn cool you know like there's so many people right now doing generative AI because that's the new buzzword you know now that nft and you know crypto are not so cool anymore but generative AI is going to be so revolutionary it's great which it will be no doubt about that but there's a lot of people trying you know to to chip away at this where you really wonder like what do you have to do with this you know what is your relevant experience what's you're doing I mean like dude this is like 75 of all web 3 games are started by people that probably never made games in their lives in their life they didn't have any and and and by the way the worst example of this just to say I got to figure out the name of this company but it's the six guys from HBO that went off to make a shooter an nft shooter that's like the most absurd thing ever I think it was funded by one of the big VCS but it's ridiculous here's the thing if it was for example a

heavily story based tutor and they brought the license and the IP with them and all of that and they are just thinking well there's this thing and all that and you know one or two maybe we're like hardcore games or something I'm not gonna say they don't have any main expertise by the way I don't know exactly what company you're talking about what they're building so this is all speculative but I'm just saying you've never made a game doesn't mean you don't have any domain expertise but there are some people that literally I don't know it's just like it doesn't make any sense whatsoever and you're just wondering so you just once again doing this for for the wrong reasons I think um all right so I do have one question that that's kind of been bothering me about this whole thing and this is part of my my uh my experience as you know working at companies is when you're hiring people like in in this growth stage what is more important is it more important to find employees that share your vision or pull employees that challenge your vision right so that you have a sounding board

of the people that you hire or do you just fire find people that are loyal and and share share the vision I guess that's always been my question because a lot of times in my my experiences a lot of execs hire people that uh don't question their Vision they're just more like um you know good minions right to help them execute their Vision right they don't want people to challenge them because that creates more conflict and they just want things to get done the way they want them to done so anyway what do you what do you what what is kind of your like expert take on that before I jump into that I'm actually really curious what's your take on it so you just ask me what's more important vision or you're just people following along how would you answer that question I don't know my question my thing is that you want people to challenge you to make so you make better decisions like fundamentally like maybe but that's probably been my role

throughout my career so it's like I guess I'm like just you know betting my own book right or you know but but at the end of the day I mean there's a lot of times that execs just hire people that are loyal right that they know will not and I'm not going to name names here because I don't want to I know who you think even more trouble but like at the end of the day they just hire people that are yes men that will do what they say and that that that don't challenge the status quo because they do not want to deal with that kind of like things and I've heard these Executives say these words it's not like this is not like yeah it's not like some like secret either so people don't really get promoted based on Merit but more based on um I guess loyalty right um so yeah I I think you know for once we're fairly aligned in in the assessment of this question so the the you need both in the end right you need people that um that are passionate about the larger

vision of the company because the vision you know is what drives the mission of the company so if I work somewhere where I don't really care about this like you know if it happens great if it doesn't whatever um that is is not gonna make me go the extra mile so you have to you know be able to subscribe to the overall vision and vision of the company but that doesn't mean you know as an exec from my point of view that you want to surround yourself with a bunch of Fanboys which is what you described before all right just like loyal Fanboys um difference of opinion constructive criticism and going back to that you know conflict are all very healthy and needed to find the best way forward um so you want a healthy discourse and you want to encourage debate and that will only happen if you have people that you know feel safe enough and and you know feel hurt and and and you know dare to speak up and push back and say I think we're on the wrong course here this is not going to work and by the way

I have the data to back it up and we have to you know recalibrate um if if your goal really is to have the boss have the best possible outcome you know whether that's on the product level or on a you know whole company level then I think that is um by far the best way forward to run a successful business but I also know there are a lot of Executives out there that have a different approach got it and and the other question I always have um is like how do you actually manage these guys that you're talking to the or guys or girls for that matter that you talk to that they're personal and the professional balance right so I imagine these Founders who are growing their business just have no life besides what they do at the office um what do you how do you recommend to you know balance that um you know what sacrifices required like yeah how do you manage your time when you're trying to build something like this well what's even more important than managing your time and you're right

you'll spend pretty much every waking hour on on this thing is how you manage your attention right because you can also you know be with your family or you know play tennis or something if your mind is still completely on the company all the time then yes you might be spending your time playing tennis but really your attention is is on something else so um in one word it's going to be sustainable and that is you know not the same for everyone out there um but this old saying it's a marathon not a Sprint is true and um and so startups usually start with nothing right there's no money is no office no team no product no marketing no strategy just it's just nothing um so getting this off the ground even somewhere takes huge commitment and sacrifice there's no way around it and if you're not ready to do this do something else um so you have to live and breathe this

thing and you're working on it way more than on a normal job and when you're not working as I said before you're probably still thinking about it you know while you're laying in bed or while you're having dinner or something um the tricky part and like where you're Crossing the the line into this is not sustainable anymore is is when your identity you know as Eric for example uh and your self-worth becomes so intertwined with what you do um that that that's all that you know defines you um and then you constantly push yourself beyond the net the limit you know you start neglecting self-care whether that's you know eating well working out sleep big big big thing you know you just like screw that I'll sleep three hours of that and and I'll raise my hand here I've lived like that for years and and then it starts affecting your relationship you know to your partners start to like the relationship to other people and so all of the support structure that you have as a human you know that is not only the founder of

company X you know starts to crumble underneath you that then very much starts affecting your performance and that's they're not sustainable look I mean don't you think though in order to be successful that you kind of have to be a megalomaniac narcissist that basically sacrifices his entire life to get this thing done like I think you have to make a lot of sacrifices and commitments and I think there has to have to be moments where you are you know where the the megalomania is what you know drives you you and your vision forward in in times of you know huge setback absolutely and you can also you know live on a crazy sleep schedule especially when you're younger you know for an extended period of time but you can't do this for years eventually you will [ __ ] yourself up that's just the truth of the matter so you were asking about balance yes you you you gotta gotta go all in and push really really hard and and and and not give up right and not pivot and and change your mind when there's the first little bit

of headwind and all that that's all true that's all all important but um if you think about it you know what what's the founder that you can invest in um I want to see from a Founder that there's a certain level of recognition that if I just deplete my battery you know into the Red Zone all the freaking time then that's not something you're getting you know Applause for me for exclusively because I know if I'm an early stage investor for example you know on average it'll even if things go perfectly well it will take me seven years to see anything back if you crash and burn four years in that's not good for for business so there has to be a balance all right all right I guess I I've just seen like you don't have to be a narcissist no I think you have to be a nurse I I I I know it's a different kind of calculus but these investment bankers that I that I was I started my career with were like basically all almost exactly the same

type of story and one of them came up to me this Paul Barber I think he's still around and he's like look you know you want to do this business you're never going to see your family you're never going to be able to like be there for your kids like you just have to sacrifice everything to be a successful investment banker and that's exactly what happened to him I think they got divorced he probably was changed from his kids half of their money you know the other way yeah exactly but he was [ __ ] successful dude the guy was a baller right like crops when it came to the software uh uh back in the way they way long days in the 90s um and I don't know I remember that story specifically him saying that I'm like holy crap I'm like this is not for me like I'm not sacrificing my entire life to do investment banking but that's kind of what was required so I feel like um uh that that that that may be a requirement for a lot of these type of uh you know high functioning you know exact roles but but uh but I I I definitely understand why balance is

important um well and also I think you can be incredibly driven and also incredibly successful without being a narcissist or or neglecting everything else in your life and and just you know just going for this one metric and nothing else um people will agree with me here but you know that's my opinion got it um all right anything else like key to success for these execs and anything we haven't covered yet as far I think other key learnings that you have that uh you could share with the uh the folks that are looking into becoming successful narcissistic megalomaniac founders neglecting everything else in their life Founders look um I think one thing we haven't talked about yet and you're gonna roll your eyes again because that sounds like you know very feely again it's like the whole passion idea

um I think there there's there's no you know absolute you know pre-bake path that you have to take in order to be a successful founder I think there's a there's a lot of diversity out there not only in like the people that do this but also you know how they got to to where they were um what I think is is very important you ask yourself why you want to do this honestly you know I just have a heart to heart with yourself and by the way asking all of these questions that might be painful um in the beginning I can only tell you when you're a year in it's three times as painful because there's a lot more [ __ ] riding on it so it'll never be as easy as in the very beginning so ask yourself you know why do you want to do it and maybe write it down and sit on it for you know a few weeks and look at it again because eventually making money is great you know and that is also something that drove me as a Founder tremendously because I you know that there's this you know oh wow that wouldn't that be awesome

but speaking of investment banking if you're just looking for the career that has the highest probability you know to to to make a bunch of money for you there probably and you know tell me if you agree with this statement Eric but they are probably way better uh odds out there than than starting a company right no that's totally true yeah if you can get into Investment Banking or Consulting like I think making lots of money like you mean you may not knock it out of the park per se but you uh you will make lots of money because there are a lot of starving Founders out there right yeah um so so that's one thing but but if your motivation really is it's like hey I want to give this a shot I see this opportunity I I I think I see something that a lot of people are are not seeing I have um you know I have the energy I have the passion um and I wanna change the status quo built this product built the service and see how it goes and yeah whatever if nobody pays me for it in the beginning I'll just Tink around with it and I know I will win because I will learn a lot of [ __ ] along

the way and uh and I'm okay you're my EU is okay you know walking away from it you know six or 12 months in or even even sooner then that is awesome um because for most people that have you know runaway successes this was not the first company they ever found it right they took multiple shots on gold before they got there um the flip side is that speaking of you know your ego and your personality getting intertwined with what it is that you do and that then solely defines you that is all the the tricky part is that at some point you can't see the force for all the trees anymore you have a hard time putting in the feedback you're in this conundrum where it's like oh is this a persevere or pivot or get out of it and um you have diminishing returns uh on the learnings and on the relationship you build and all of that so if something is not really working out within a year and a half and once again I've been guilty of making that mistake and you know sticking to something too long and you should really

ask yourself you know if I want to get out and last thing the best way to do this is to write down where you want to be at a certain point in time let's say you're in what needs to be true for you to come continue because if you don't write it down that story and that memory will change in your head over and over and over again and it's really easy to fool yourself into something that will you know take too long all right final question in what way does your service help help the interactive industry being a Founder CEO is heart and it can also be very very lonely um at the top so from an Investor's point of view if I'm investing in a company I'm betting on the founding team um the earlier I am you know stage wise as an investor the more I'm investing in the people and not in the existing business because they're not a lot of numbers to go around so

after an investor makes his investment you know his mind changes or goes to you know what's the most impactful way I can support a founding team um to reach his full potential and make me the most amount of money and I think coaching is a very powerful tool to do that awesome and how could anyone reach you about your coaching Services as well you find you find me on LinkedIn chilling again oh go ahead sorry no Nicholas harrigger.com or LinkedIn I'll leave it at that all right thanks for coming out I'm looking forward to our next romp through uh Marin hopefully we uh take out some of those bike riders with the twenty thousand dollar bikes but that is Eric that is not me I am no interest in catching it through that kind of did anybody that has a 20 000 bike deserves to get run

over at least once in their life but uh anyway don't you have a really expensive electric mountain bike hey hey that's not part of the joke all right um anyway talk to you soon talk to you soon buddy thank you bye