[Applause] all right turn on the camera turn on the camera I got a rant for [Music] you I got a call yesterday from a entrepreneur who was going through something that is so relatable they were stuck they're they're at a plateau their business is not growing as fast as they want they were pitching me on all the new things they were going to do new features they were going to add the new project and then they told start telling me about the side hustle that they got going on and I had to stop them and I had to tell them the truth the truth is stop searching for answers we are all guilty of this you know like if I'm fat all of a sudden I'm keto I'm paleo I'm reading books I'm listening to podcasts and I'm not just doing the obvious things the Trap that people fall into is thinking that the answer to their problems is elsewhere that maybe a a mentor has it or a book has it or there's some knowledge that they don't have and that's what's holding them back but that's really never the case if I talk to nine out of 10 people only one might need a strategy change for nine out of 10 the answer is up your level of intensity the best part about intensity is that it's contagious that you can actually create a culture of intensity there's a wonderful story about Peter teal when he was running PayPal so Peter teal was one of the he was a CEO of PayPal he's the first investor in Facebook and I was curious because Peter T's kind of like a sort of a weird dude and I was like he doesn't seem like a classic manager leader inspiring guy super organized button down running you know daily standups it turns out he didn't really do any of that he had a very simple system his Common Sense system was well everybody in the company should fig figure out one priority like you you should have one priority in your brain you're going to do one thing what's it going to be and forcing people to figure out one priority not a to-do list but a single priority was an incredible forcing function everybody had to say something and if you said something stupid it would be like that's your priority and so everybody picked one priority but now that's good but that's just like you know the very very first half of the what's the second half actually sticking to that because human nature is Everything feels important I have my one priority but then there's the second thing that's important too and then there's a third thing that's important too and the problem with this that Peter said was that imagine you have three priorities and even if you you stack rank them you said this is number one number two number three what happens is that we often don't know the answer to number one number one lacks a a clear solution it's a gnarly problem it's an important problem but it's not an obvious problem so what we do is we just gravitate towards the second task because it's much clearer I know what to do there so I I gravitate towards the known right it's that Warren Buffett story where the guy lost his keys outside of a bar so he's crawling around on the ground trying to find his keys and the officer says uh uh sir what are you doing he I'm looking for my keys did you drop them here no no no I dropped him over there well why you crawling over here because this is where the light is and that's how most people operate in their day-to-day priorities we crawl around where the light is we crawl around doing the known things the things that feel familiar to us rather than the important things the things where the solution actually is over there it's just in the dark and so Peter what he would do is if anybody tried to talk to him about something that was not their their big thing their one thing he would literally just leave the room he's like oh you're talking to me about that I thought your thing is this okay see you he's like I'm not going to sit here and try to convince you but I will signal to you that this is not a priority by literally just leaving the meeting or leaving the room or just not refusing to talk to you about anything besides your one thing to teal what he what he said was he goes if you allow yourself to have more than one Focus you've already blinked I love that you've already blinked you've flinched and he says you know you've determined that mediocrity is an acceptable outcome my singular Focus philosophy is that Solutions may not be clear but the paths to Excellence and value are and the path to Excellence and value is to have a singular focus and I believe this to be true I believe that the mind is a very powerful tool I call the brain a answering machine it's just about what question you ask it if you ask yourself a bunch of questions like um why did this person cut me off your brain will tell you because they're an because you've told your brain to focus its attention on why this person cut you off in traffic right you've focused your powerful tool on a silly thing to focus on and um you know the brain can really only handle one question at a time is not a m as much as we think we can multitask we really can't we can kind of solve one problem at a time it's just a question of what are you going to load into your brain and are you willing to let it sit there until it is solved that Peter teal one priority philosophy is a very powerful one and something that that I Implement on my day-to-day basis all right so first let me dispel some myths because I can already hear you in the comments I can hear you typ it away because what you're thinking is probably what I used to think which is dude I don't want to work 247 that's not my goal well intensity is not working 247 that's the first thing intensity is a Formula actually it is focus Times Common Sense times Insanity that's it Focus Times Common Sense times Insanity that is what I mean when I say intensity there's a great quote by the way I saw Conor McGregor and Conor McGregor's story is insane he went from a plumber on welfare to the highest paid richest athlete in the world on the Forbes list to the first two-weight world champion in the UFC and he did this all in like five or six years and there was a video of him after his training session I've lost my mind on this game like Vincent Van go dedicated his life to the his art and lost his mind in the process that's happened to me when that gold Bel was around on my waist my mother has a big mansion my girlfriend has a different car for every day of the week my kids kids have everything they ever want then it will pay and I and I'm happy I lost my mind yeah I'll die a crazy old man and that is the level of intensity and Insanity that you can get to if you really do this at a level 12 and not everybody's going to want to do this at level 12 but you should know what level 12 looks like you should know what it is and then you get to decide how you're going to dial that knob down the problem most people have is they think they're already at a level 10 they don't even consider level 12 they think they're already at 10 when in actuality they're at six and today I'm going to show you how you are at a six and you're not out of 10 because that is a lie it's a dangerous lie we want to tell ourselves the other misconception by the way is oh great I got to do more I'm already busy I'm already overwhelmed now I got to do more no no no it's actually the opposite you are going to end up doing less uh there's a great Steve Jobs quote I'm going to butcher it but it's basically something like focus is saying no to a 100 great ideas so you can say yes to the one exceptional one focus is saying no to a 100 great ideas great ideas are ideas that you could totally make a case for that you would it would seem smart for you to go do but doing a hundred of them doesn't work right you can do anything you just can't do everything and so focus is saying no to the great ideas so you can do the one exception one so if you do this right you're not doing more you're actually doing less you're just doing it better all right guys really quick so back when I was running the hustle we had this premium newsletter called Trends the way it worked was we hired a ton of analysts and we created this sort of playbook for researching different companies and ideas and emerging Trends to help you make money and build businesses well HubSpot did something kind of cool so they took this Playbook that we developed and we gave to our analysts and they turned it into an actionable guide and a resource that anyone can download and it breaks down all the different methods that we use for spotting upcoming trends for spotting different companies that are going to explode and grow really quickly so if you want to stay ahead of the game and you want to find cool business ideas or different niches that most people have no idea they exist this is the ultimate guide so if you want to check it out you can see the link Down Below in the description now back to the show okay let's jump into some examples and I'm going to start with some business examples because there's plenty of like inspirational athlete stories or just kind of like General motivation but this is business podcast I am all about business so let's do the first one so first one is Mark Zuckerberg so there's a great story of Zuck when he bought Instagram and by the way today if Facebook had not bought Instagram Facebook might be dead Instagram like literally ended up becoming the next social network it was going to be his biggest competitor and Facebook bought it well okay that's cool that's just a business decision right it's a strategy decision no no no it was a story of intensity so here's How The Story Goes the founder of Instagram Kevin cam used to work at a place called Odio he was uh actually kind of like an intern sitting at the desk next to this guy named Jack D Odio pivots to Twitter that becomes Twitter Jack dorsy ends up being the CEO of Twitter at one point in time and Jack dorsy is kind of like his mentor so Kevin creates Instagram Twitter doesn't have photo sharing Twitter says we want to buy Instagram and they offer to buy it for something like $400 $500 million and again this is they have the relationship they were first to make the offer they offered a big sum of money so they did what they thought was level 12 intensity but then Zuck came and showed them what's up so the way that the story goes down is Mark Zuckerberg starts texting Kevin Cam and he says um hey I want to meet I wanna I want to talk to you about buying the company and Mark intensity is almost known it's sort of legendary in the industry so Kevin is texting his investor and he's saying should I meet with Zuck I don't I'm worried if I if I go there I don't really want to sell and I feel like if I tell him I don't want to sell is he just going to go into like psycho mode and crush me and the investor goes yeah probably and so he's like okay I guess I'll take the meeting he already has a deal on the table to to Twitter for $550 million he then meets with seoa the number one VC in Silicon Valley and they say you know what you should stay independent Instagram can be big we will fund you at $500 million so same valuation but you get to keep going you get to keep your Independence but he goes to meet Zuck and he goes unlike Twitter Zuck did not take no for an answer so he rejects Zuck first Zuck says no no no just come over my house and talk can you just come over today and he says I guess I got to go over there I don't want to really piss this guy off so he just says okay I'll I'll just go over there so he goes to his house and now this is Good Friday you know Easter's on Sunday he goes to his house on Friday and he walks in and Zuck says the following he says I've thought about it and I want to buy your company and Kevin's like I know but I already said no he says I will give you double whatever you're you're currently raising around at so whatever your price is I'll give you double and that would mean that Instagram would be worth a billion dollars and nobody had ever paid this much for a mobile app before this would be the first deal of its kind Instagram had zero Revenue had like less than 20 employees it was tiny this seemed like outrageously over the toop way of going about things and Zuck said well look I can give you a billion dollars for this but here's the deal we got to do this deal this weekend and he basically pushed him and this was again it's Easter on Sunday nobody's working over the weekend the Twitter guys think that they have a deal in the bag the Sequoia guys think that they have a deal in the bag and the mistake they made was they thought that work starts on Mondays and Zuck just decided to work over the weekend so he basically said look let's stay here and we'll either hash out the deal and we'll make a deal happen or we'll figure out the deal is not going to happen but let's just agree we're going to stay here and we're going to figure it out so he says okay so they basically stayed together for 48 hours Zuck calls his lawyers he calls his Corp Dev guys he says get over here we got to figure out how we're going to close this deal now Kevin calls his investors he's like hey I'm thinking about having this deal and here's the quote one of his investor says I sat back and thought what just happened like holy what just happened how did he pull this off and Zuck had this belief that that if we don't create the thing that kills Facebook somebody else will the internet's not a friendly place I have to act with a certain of intensity when we find a deal that's like this and so over the weekend just to give you a perspective to do a billion doll deal generally takes time six months will go by nine months will go by Zuck his lawyers and the founder of Instagram they they end up cutting this deal over the weekend they do a billion dollar deal in 48 hours and by the time the competition woke up on Monday the deal was gone so that's the the story of how Zuck buys Instagram and by the way this is not the first time he also bought WhatsApp how he bought WhatsApp was the same way and WhatsApp had the right culture WhatsApp also operated with high intensity there's a famous story that the founder of WhatsApp had this sticky note on his desk and they took a picture of it when he sold and it said no ads no games no gimmicks that was their mindset every other messaging app was always adding more and more features they would add games they would add stickers they would add some some ads into it they would just keep adding things and they said the way we're going to win is we're going to do the basic thing messaging and we're just going to do it better than anybody else they were like Chick-fil-A have you ever been to a Chick-fil-A like you don't go to Chick-fil-A because Chick-fil-A adds fish filets on the menu no no no Chick-fil-A decided to have a common sense strategy we're going to sell chicken sandwiches and they just do it with a better level of intensity than anybody else they sell a better chicken sandwich In-N-Out does the same thing In-N-Out it's like we're gon to sell a burger and fries is not a revolutionary strategy they did not pivot they did not innovate in that they just brought a higher level of intensity to it than anybody else was willing to do at the time and so those two fast food chains make more money per location than chains that do 10 times more things that have a wider menu that have more locations because they operate with a higher level of intensity that's the same way that what'sapp and Zuck approached business the founder of WhatsApp always said he goes the FW around here is focus he says uh I don't think about things that I can't figure out I don't think about the future I don't go to conferences and give talks about where the industry is going he goes I focus my brain around the things that I can wrap my head around like this customer's complaining about this thing let me go fix that bug and he said that the reason they sold a Facebook was because Zuck chased them for two years personally he would meet them for coffee then a hike no deal would happen and he would keep inviting them hikes dinners coffees and he did that for two years until finally they relented and they ended up closing the deal okay I want to talk to you about stripe one of the stories I love about stripe comes from Paul Graham Paul Graham was you know running YC at the time when stripe went through it he met the founders early on and these were a couple of teenagers that were basically saying we're going to change the financial system we're going to change the payment system we're going to go work with banks and he's like these two you know redheaded teenagers think that they could do this all right well I'm curious let's see what happens and he noted that stripe was doing one thing very differently than the average company through YC remember YC is the best of the best so these guys were uncommon amongst the uncommon companies and so he called it the cison installation he said most companies when they would talk to a potential customer they would bump into another founder they would say oh yeah here's what we do they would say oh that's interesting that's cool he say oh awesome you're interested cool I'll send you a link uh I'll send you invite to the beta when we're ready and you can sign up that's what most people do he said what the cison would do was very different we started calling this the cison installation which would be as soon as somebody showed any sign of Interest they would say awesome do you have your laptop on you I can just set you up right now I'll do it for you and they would literally Brute Force get customers on board the person would open up their laptop and they would literally install stripe they would explain it to them and they would onboard them on the spot and they did this to the first you know 100 200 customers manually and Paul Graham noted he goes you know I want wonder why don't more people do this it's not like this was some outrageous strategy it's not that it was even like that hard to do he said the reason people don't do this is two things shyness or a fear of rejection um he goes also a misconception he goes they think that big things come from big things but actually big things come from an accumulation of smaller things I thought it was a beautiful way of putting it to understand how a big thing happens is just a accumulation of smaller things and he said that you know many people believe that startups you know take off or they don't take off that your business either works or it doesn't work and he said actually what I've learned doing YC is that startups happen because the founder makes them happen they take off because the founder makes them take off and he goes it's like an engine right you can't force something that's never going to work to work what you can do is if something has the potential to work you can crank that engine manually hand crank it to get it going and then it starts and once the engine started you know you pushed the boulder enough eventually it starts to roll and now you're chasing the momentum of it rolling downhill but at the beginning it felt like pushing it to the top of the hill and I thought that was a great analogy of how stripe operated with a higher level of intensity and if that's how they onboarded customers imagine how they did the 10 other things because how you do one thing is how you do everything the Trap that people fall into is thinking that the answer to their problems is elsewhere that maybe a a mentor has it or a book has it or there's some knowledge that they don't have and that's what's holding him back but that's really never the case so rarely is that the case almost always the answer you seek is within one of the great stories about this comes from Ben Horwitz he has this phrase he goes lead bullets not silver bullets and he's talking about when he was running his company they were at a very tough point there was tough competition the company was on the line it was it going to go go Bust or they were going to figure out a way to make it he go my first instinct was to Pivot to try to find a magical win it's a magical solution a rabbit out of a hat he's like I so wanted to stand in front of my company and say aha I have the answer I I went for this walk I met this guy and here's the answer we just got to do this and it'll all work out he said but that's not really how it worked he goes I I stood in front of the company and I told them I said there are no silver bullets for this only lead bullets they didn't want to hear that but I had to make it clear we simply had to build a better product there was no other way out there was no window no hole no escape hatch no back door we have to go through the front door and deal with the big ugly Glide that's blocking it we needed lead bullets in my experience the thing that's actually come out of this philosophy of there are no several bullets is that actually there are bullets but the only way you discover them is by just firing a ton of bullets that you think are lad and then you sort of pleasantly surprise yourself when you find one idea one experiment one uh tactic that totally works in an outsize way uh you find your silver bullet but the only way to do that is by being the guy who believes there are only lead bullets so that's I'm gonna I'm willing to fire all the lead bullets in order to make this work versus the guy who's going to run around trying to just find the one magical Silver Bullet and really take no action right if you want to look at your pie chart you should be spend spending maybe 10% of your time on the idea or the strategy side of things it is important to get a good strategy but it's usually a very common sense strategy if your strategy is convoluted if your strategy requires multiple new Innovations and leaps of Faith you are likely going to fail you are likely duding yourself into thinking that the pie chart is 80% ideas and 20% execution it's much more like 10 or 20% ideas and strategy and 80% Blood Sweat and Tears and that Blood Sweat and Tears should come from a certain level of intensity right it's not simply about working more hours it's not simply about just burying yourself in the office there are times where you'll do that and that's the other kind of philosophy that you should internalize which is there is a time to Sprint okay you cannot Sprint the whole time you cannot always be running your max speed it doesn't work that way but you should be able to recognize when you need to change years and you need to Sprint one of the stories I love I've talked about this in the podcast before is the story of Sylvester Stallone Sylvester Stallone wants to be an actor and so goes in the auditions everywhere and he can't get a get a role nobody wants to cast him as an actor he doesn't look the part his mouth moves a little funny because he had a problem at Birth and he just wasn't the guy he wasn't the Classic Hollywood face he doesn't give up he decides take matters into his own hands he says if I can't get cast in a movie I will make a movie and I will give myself the role H the problem is he hates writing so he decides well I'm gonna for this I got a Sprint I'm gonna do this thing at the best I can but I will plow through I will brute force my way to this so he goes to his house and decides to write a movie he writes the first script of Rocky the rough draft of Rocky in three days three days most people don't think that's possible he did in three days he talks about how he did it I want to read you this quote this this is sylvest Salone talking about uh Focus his daughter asked him she goes did you really paint your windows black to focus he goes yeah I did paint them black because I didn't want to know what time it was it didn't matter what time it was it was time to write otherwise I would tell myself oh it's time to for time for breakfast and I would immediately myself I would say well I'm just going to have breakfast when I'm hungry I don't need to know what time it is and that was the kind of thing you know I wanted to eliminate all my possible excuses all my possible distractions because I knew how hard it was for me to write I was begging when I was writing please someone just call the phone just please get me to do anything else besides this but instead I unplugged the phone so that nobody could call I painted the windows black he says 100% black windows no phone and that approach of painting the windows black is a certain level of intensity he doesn't do it all the time but he knew there was a time to Sprint so one of the key things in life is to identify when a great opportunity comes your way or when it's time to buckle down this is the moment it's you're going on One path or the other path and that is the time to Sprint that is the time you dial up your level of intensity so I have three actions for you how do you actually go do this first you need to narrow your focus I did a whole podcast on this called laser focus go watch that it's like 20 minutes long it's good so you need to narrow your focus you need to stop giving your brain so many different priorities and so many different problems to think about you need to narrow it down that's the first thing Focus the second thing is you need to write down your common sense solution I call it a common sense solution because that's the check your solution to your problem should sound very easy it should sound as simple as I got to go figure out why all these people are churning canceling their subscription I need to go solve that or I need to make better product I need to make a product so good that people want to share it that's my strategy make a product so good that people want to share it my strategy is I need to make 30 sales calls a day if I want sales to grow I just need to do more calls 30 a day I'm going to take a giant sticky note I'm going to write 30 and every day I'm gonna cross that 30 out and then tomorrow I'm gonna wake up and the first thing I do is I write the big number 30 Again by the way this is something I actually did uh for my companies write a giant number on the wall and that number is the one thing I need to do today if I do that one thing alone I have made today successful so you need a common sense strategy that you can execute so like a no-brainer fifth grader strategy that you can execute at a level 12 and that's the last question the last thing you need to do is ask yourself what was what would level 12 intensity look like at this thing that I'm doing just as a thought experiment you don't even have to do it but just ask yourself that question right if I dialed the intensity knob all the way to 12 what would that look like what would I actually do I'll give you a very simple example A lot of people probably you out there listening to this have had a goal at some point in time of getting in better shape right you want to lose weight you want to go run a marathon at a certain time whatever you want to get into your the best shape of your life and we've taken what we think is a level 10 intensity to this right I did I did the best I could do right I uh I hired a coach or I you I I I wrote down my goals and I I tried it just didn't work out well Jesse Isler a guy's been a guest on this podcast he had the same goal as you he wanted to get in the best shape of his life he wanted to get in the best running shape of his life so what did he do he hired a Navy SEAL to come live in his house and whoop his ass every day he said I will do everything you tell me to do whatever time you tell me to wake up I wake up what however many miles you tell me to run I'll run he would train two to three times a day for 30 days straight he ate exactly what this guy said he drank exactly what this guy said he did pull-ups when this guy said do pull-ups he ran when this guy said run it was raining it was hailing outside it was freezing cold he get out there and he would run that Navy SEAL by the way was David gogins this is before David gogins was even popular he hired David gogins to come live in his house for 30 days he would come into the bedroom where him and his wife were sleeping and wake him up and say wake up we're running now that was level 12 intensity and the sad part is we don't even know what level 12 looks like until we've heard something like this so if I did one thing for you today I hope I just inspired you to go figure out what level 12 intensity even looks like maybe from the examples I gave you today maybe from some people in your life find a way to see it and find a way to ask yourself what does level 12 look like if I ratcheted up the intensity of the thing I'm already doing that's it [Music] h