Latest / Success Story with Scott Clary / Lessons - The Framework for Evaluating Investments | Matt Higgins - CEO & Co-Founder of RSE Ventures

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Lessons - The Framework for Evaluating Investments | Matt Higgins - CEO & Co-Founder of RSE Ventures · Success Story with Scott Clary

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  In this lessons episode, discover the transformative power of the Burn the Boats mindset,
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  and why eliminating Plan B can drive unparalleled success.
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  Learn how to overcome internal and external obstacles, embrace perpetual growth,
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  and find joy in striving all while staying present and consolidating your gains.
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  So now you've moved yourself out of this really destitute situation that you're in.
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  Burn the Boats at later stages in your career. What does that actually look like for you?
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  So I think it's good to frame a little bit what the phrase mean. Why I became obsessed with this idea.
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  Yeah, because I did we've heard some of us have heard this before, but I've never heard
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  somebody go so into the weeds on it yet. Yeah, no, it's funny. I remember I was with Mark Cuban at
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  an event and I made this bird, you know, burn the Boats reference and he's like,
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  bird the Boats, what are you talking about? And I was like, oh, I thought I thought this is
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  sort of like in the vernacular and I realized it's not entirely. So what where's the phrase come
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  from? Throughout recorded history from time immemorial, you'll see military strategists will invoke
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  this idea that they weigh the way they got their army to overcome improbable odds. They were
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  outnumbered 10 to 1, whatever the cases that they literally burned the Boats. They eliminated
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  their escape out their scape hatch art of war. They referred to burn the Boats in the cooking
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  pots. And the reason why is that humans perform better when they have no plan B. They have no,
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  you know, escape route. Now these tend to be some pretty nasty people in history. So I've
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  I've appropriated this military doctrine and decided to use it for the rest of us in peacetime.
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  So let's forget Caesar, you know, sun zoo and Cortez and pull it forward for our own life.
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  So I got obsessed with this idea and then when I work for the New York Jets for those who don't know,
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  I used to oversee the business of the New York Jets back in the day and I work with Rex Ryan
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  as a coach and you know, Rex is an animated individual wears his heart on his sleeve and
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  can fire anybody up. And we were playing the Pittsburgh Steelers in the playoffs and the underdog
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  and Rex gave a speech about this idea of burn the Boats. I'm just asking you to go all in for one
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  day and don't worry about what happens if we fail. Don't worry about the consequences. Just give
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  me everything you got for one quarter or one half. It was I think it was a halftime speech. No,
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  it was the night before for one day and the team won and you could feel it was palpable in the room
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  how catalytic this idea of just surrender to the goal submit let it go. And so I said, okay,
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  that I want to prove to end of to people that humans perform better without a safety net.
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  And I want to approach it from two different angles. One, I want to approach it empirically.
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  So I want to survey history, psychology and science to prove that humans actually perform better
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  without a plan B. And the reason why is when they went a lot of folks here, the title of this book,
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  they reflexively say, well, I can't take on risk. This is irresponsible. It's called burn the
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  Boats. Not burn the Boats with you in it. And it's not called blow up the bridges, right? So the idea
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  is eliminate your plan B that doesn't part of the process of doing so is actually processing the worst
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  case scenario. One of the I talk about this in about one of the first steps is to synthesize and
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  recognize what's the worst that can happen if this big mode I'm about to make goes wrong. And by
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  doing that, you can now can peacefully accept the risk because you already processed, you know,
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  the downside. So one, I want to approach it from science and history and psychology, but the other is
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  I wanted to provide actionable case studies, illustrations so that you wouldn't distance yourself
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  from the individual. What I mean by that? Like, I'm on Shark Tank. If you met me and I look well
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  dressed, you can make lots of assumptions about it. I teach at Harvard Business School. You could
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  assume that I was born on third base, right? I want to deconstruct who I am. So you see the origin
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  in the journey and you could say, Oh, you were a high school dropout. Oh, you have imposter syndrome.
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  You were divorced and you're embarrassed by it. You went through a lot of pain. You suffer from
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  anxiety. You have a degree of lingering kitties teeth. You're not over your stuff, right? Like,
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  I'm very important to be to manifest in this world as a representation of how I got there,
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  not where I am. And I then broke down 50 different individuals that from every different angle,
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  founders, billionaires, actresses, Scarlett Johansson as a friend of mine, an Olympian who became
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  a paraplegic at 14 and thinks her life is better off for it. An activist who is who is the victim
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  of sexual abuse when she was a child from a nanny, every angle so that those who reflexively say,
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  I can't afford to burn the boats and I can't afford to let go of my plan B. And those people
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  are different from me. I want to offer so many different case studies that it would be hard,
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  not to identify with something. And the second part, Instagram is full of so many,
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  you know, empty platitudes, you know, sunny, sunny advice like,
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  we're the boats, you know, get out there. Like that stuff is useless. It doesn't last more than 30
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  seconds, a little adrenaline hit. I hope what I've done with the book is provided an actionable blueprint
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  to for to embrace a growth mindset and to just let go, like, shed your shame, shed the things
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  that are holding you back and move beyond the rhetoric into actually actionable advice.
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  And okay, so let's so let's lay out like a little bit of this framework so people can understand
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  it. So what is what is the framework that you actually teach over? Because obviously this
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  is probably something that you've seen again across all those leaders that you just mentioned,
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  you've probably seen it with I'm assuming some of the successful investments you made on
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  Shark Tank, obviously in your own life as well. So what's what are the main points of that framework?
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  Okay, great. It's all well, one number one. The whole concept is promised on the idea that the true
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  joy of living is in the striping and the, you know, when you go to the top of the mountain top and
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  you look around, you realize there's nothing to see that that joy was the climate when you were
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  looking up trying to get there, not looking down and looking around. So that's number one. So I think
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  I think that's true for like 99% of the population. So we begin there. So how do you live a life of
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  perpetual growth and how do you? And the things that stand in our way are either internal obstacles
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  and external obstacles. So I say any journey of transcendence across the threshold to make that
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  bull move begins by unlocking the greatest arbitrage entirely within our control, which is self-awareness,
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  right? It's figuring out what is it in me that's preventing me from making that bull move. You know,
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  it's in whether it's in posture syndrome and I talk about how to overcome it, whether it's shame,
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  I think a lot of the reasons why leaders underperform is because they haven't gone through the
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  exercise of shedding shame. So how do you create a place and space for you to go ahead and let go
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  of your vulnerability? It's how do you retrain the voice in your head to be your greatest ally
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  rather than your greatest enemy? I talk a lot about sabotage. And so let with it's a little bit
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  similar to what I do when I'm assessing an investment is I analyze and look under the hood
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  because the fish roach from the head is the Italian side. So you need to undertake that
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  own exercise for yourself. My book takes you to the journey of how I did it myself and how other
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  leaders have reflected upon what's holding them back and overcome those internal obstacles.
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  And then they're the external obstacles that stand in your way. I go through the the corporate
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  saboteurs, you know, and I try to put into words things we all feel and I'll make it a little abstract.
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  They are these archetypes that manifest in a corporate setting as leaders, CEOs, managers,
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  and they're either victims, their martyrs, their corporate gaslighters. The one that I think
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  a lot of people can relate to is this idea of a withholder. So what's a withholder? A withholder
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  is someone who recognizes that an employee or a partner in a relationship context is a pleaser
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  and is dependent upon validation and affirmation in order to sustain themselves, right? And
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  they understand that if they, if they withhold that recognition, that praise, they destabilize
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  that individual, that pleaser, and they'll work that much harder to go ahead and over and get
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  that approval, right? So there are, I tried to in the book deconstruct these unsaid things that
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  operate upon us and hold us back that prevent us from going out that destabilize us so that if you
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  can identify it, you can deal with it. And I, I love the withholder one because when I mentioned
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  this, people go, Oh, I feel that I feel like somebody is denying me the praise that I need,
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  and I'm, and one, I'm sad that I can't get it into them, sad that I need it. And so I think
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  when you find when you read the book, again, that's pretty abstract stuff. We're talking about,
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  but you know, you can reduce these things that are operating on us that are holding us back
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  into words, articulate them, and then manage them. And so for each of these ideas, I come up with
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  strategies for how to, how to move beyond them and talk about how I did it in my own personal life.
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  And one thing you mentioned, you mentioned perpetual growth. And then when you adopt this mindset,
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  it is almost a forever mindset that you apply to your life. So for people listening,
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  this could be very stressful because now they're thinking, Oh, if I really want to make it,
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  I always have to be uncomfortable. I always have to be growing. I always have to, you know, I,
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  I got the next career advancement, or I launched the side hustle, turned it into a company,
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  and now what do I have to burn next so that I take it to the next level? So I get that you have to
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  enjoy the journey. But does this not turn into perpetual stress, perpetual discontent? How do you
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  mitigate that so that you still enjoy what you're doing if you're always putting yourself into this
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  position of high stress, high growth? Such a great question. I talk about this in a book too,
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  because if position the wrong way, you'd be like, stop, like, I'm good. So, so a couple of thoughts
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  on that. It is only stressful if you live in a perpetual place of anticipation. If you're
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  never present, if you're always worried and thinking about, you know, what's going to happen
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  the downside, I talk a lot in my book about how to reach, how to retain your group grip on the
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  moment and how much contemplating my own mortality factors into this philosophy. I have an
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  ab in my phone call, We Croak, five times a day, well, this sounds actually crazy, but five times a
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  day, and in different ways, it reminds me that I'm going to die. It's a different philosophical
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  message from Socrates or somebody else. It's a little bit of stoicism built into that. That's right,
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  a little bit of a lot of bit of stoicism, right? On the simple idea that when you're reminded of
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  your mortality, the number one thing that we all fear, it actually does the opposite of what we're
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  afraid. It makes this peacefully locked in on the moment. So number one, in order to have a joyful
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  life of perpetual pursuit, you actually have to stay present, which is, you know, counterintuitive.
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  The second thing is it's okay to take a break. It's okay to, I talk in the book about consolidating
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  gains. You achieve a new milestone, you consolidate it, you go ahead and you lock it in,
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  you don't want to be a grasshopper where you're jumping from one team into the next. The point is,
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  sooner or later, if you're like most people, Mel and Collie will set in because you don't feel
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  challenged. So my, the point of the book is not you have to perpetually jump in a frantic way from
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  one thing to an ex. The sequence is burn the boats, achieve what you previously thought was
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  unachievable, consolidate your gains. Because what's the point of achieving things and then
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  the accomplishment is eroded because you didn't focus enough to make it scale, scale yourself,
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  right? So that it works in your apps, apps, or with less energy, right? I talk in the book how I
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  taught at Harvard Business School was really, really hard the first time, the second time less hard,
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  third time, every time you, we repeat something through habituation, you unlock more energy
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  for you to allocate to something else. So again, I want to make very clear to be listening. I'm
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  not arguing that you have to live a life of perpetual discontent. I'm, I'm asserting that eventually
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  you will feel Mel and Collie like every Olympic and a marathon runner who finishes the race and you
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  will want another race. And so the thing that holds us back are these internal and external obstacles.
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  I try to deconstruct them so that you could figure out how to one burn the boats to consolidate
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  the gains and then three continue on. Thanks for tuning in. If you found this valuable,
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  don't forget to hit that subscribe button so you never miss an episode. And if you want to dive
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  deeper into this conversation, check out the links in the description to watch the full episode.
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  See you in the next one.