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What's up, guys? Welcome back to Build. And today I want to talk about why side quests ruin your company as you scale. So this is incredibly top of mind for me. And honestly, as I was thinking about what I wanted to record about this week, I was like, this is not sexy, but this is so important. And I feel like nobody talks about this, especially as you're growing a company. So a few months ago, I had to let a leader go, and it wasn't like, some dramatic thing or, like, a huge scandal or, like, anything crazy, right? It was just like, that person clearly had not been competent for the job. I think that I thought that they were when I brought them on, and unfortunately, they were just not at the level needed, which, by the way, is hard because our company is growing so quickly that it is hard to find people who cannot just do the job the day they come in. But also, I'm like, okay, they're going to still be good 12, 18, 24 months from now, because especially when you're hiring somebody at, like, the highest level of leadership, you don't want to hire somebody that can just do the job today. You want to make sure that they can, you know, grow with the company for at least 18 to 24 months, I'd say, like, at an absolute minimum. And when that person came in, I just realized I was like, man, that's. It's really just not working. Because I would say on paper and as. As a person, I thought that person was a good teammate, but they were not good at communicating. Nothing was getting done. I saw people working all the time and people staying late, but, like, literally, I saw no result of it. And so it was like, you know, after two quarters, all the stuff that we actually wanted to get done by that person, what we call is, like, their MITs, their most important tasks. Literally, we're all red, which is like, at the end of our quarter, what we do is we essentially, like, red, yellow, green. Did we get our most important tasks done? And this person just kept having reds. And so, you know, I get with my partners and we talk about it. We're like, this is just not the right fit. We've given them feedback. We've walked through these things. Like, this is not. It's at the level where it was essentially, like, we just. This isn't a role that we're trying to coach for. Like, you need somebody that can come in and do this thing. And so we parted ways with that person. And after you do that, I mean, I'm sure as you Guys know when you part ways with somebody, you are always gonna find shit. And like, I promise you, if, if I fired myself tomorrow, you would find shit and be like, oh my God, I can't believe Layla wasn't doing this. Like, that is just how it works in a company. But sometimes you find stuff that's a lot more surprising. And that is what I found. I found there was a lot of stuff, projects specifically, that I had literally never heard of. And this is not like small stuff of like, oh, this like, little thing over here broke, we had to fix it, or this or that. No, no, these were like full blown projects that were being worked on, that neither myself, neither Alex, neither Shiron had any fucking clue of. And I was like, what the hell? I was like, where did this come from? This wasn't on the roadmap, this wasn't anywhere. Like, I literally don't even know where this came out of existence. And so, you know, I was talking to a couple of people on the team and, and they said something to the degree of like, you know, because a few of the teammates knew about it, but none of us knew about it. And they said, well, you know, this person asked if we could, if we could do something to help with this. And so it seemed important and so we, we did it. And I was like, oh my gosh, this is a really big problem. Because essentially what it means is like somebody asks you to do something, you just do it, right? There's no prioritization. You're not thinking about the trade offs, you're not thinking about your current capacity. There's nobody saying, what do we have to stop doing to make room for this? It's just like, yes, we're going to do this thing. And that's when I realized so much of the reason that team wasn't getting things done is not because they weren't working hard. In fact, they were working very hard and they still continue to work hard. But, but they failed to work on the right things and nobody had redirected them, nobody was prioritizing things for them and nobody was putting controls in place to make sure these things were happening. And now what do I call this? And I wrote a message to my team today about this. I call this a side quest. Okay, what are side quests in business? Side quests are like the favors the pet projects, may you call it like just a quick ask, that feels very harmless in the moment, but it is not actually tied to your fucking priorities as a business. It's almost like compulsive. Like when I think of somebody who is dieting and then they just like see a snack and eat it. That's what I think of people with side quests. It's like you have zero impulse control. It's just like, I see a problem, I see something I want done, I want to do it now, or I want to ask somebody to do it now, or I want to approve doing it now. But you're not taking the time to sit back and be proactive and really think about things. And so because of these things, they don't show up on your roadmap, they don't show up on your mits, they don't show up on your priorities, and they don't even have owners. Which is one of the worst parts about these things is that because they're not prioritizing everything else, they don't have an owner which makes it never go through the right fucking way. And then they just accumulate and then these like half baked messes that usually cause some kind of disarray in the organization. Now here's the thing is that side quests do not come from lazy people. I want you to understand this. And you might be listening to this and you're like, fuck, I ask for side quests. I am constantly putting people on side quests. I get it. I totally understand. And I remember when I learned this, it was like in 2017, it was one of the first lessons I learned which was like, I have to be very careful what I ask my team. Side quests always come from the best people and your top performers. I will fucking guarantee you nobody who's lazy goes above and beyond to do more work. Okay? It's always your best people. The people who want to be helpful. The ones who don't want to say no because they want to be a good teammate to everybody else. And they're like, I want to uphold the culture and make sure everyone feels good. And they're the people who are like, oh, I'll just squeeze this in. Or. Or maybe it could be they're. They feel guilty saying no. I can think of five people in my organization. One person I know is just constantly trying to make the organization better, but always asks for side quests or starts them without telling anybody. I know another person who is such a people pleaser that he would never say no to somebody and so he's constantly on side quests. I know another person who just honestly is reactive and a little bit ADHD and so that he's constantly starting side quests that's the thing that makes them dangerous is that they don't seem like terrible things in the moment. And they come from your best people. So a lot of times it seems like, oh, they're just working really hard. I love that they're going above and beyond. But it gets to a point where it's not helping. What it's doing is those side quests are stealing the focus, the resources, the momentum from the things that actually move the business that you've identified yourself. Now, as I was reflecting on this and I was looking at, like, how did this happen? Right? And I'm talking to different people in the organization. I'm saying, like, I'm just trying to figure out, like, what was the origin of this? The uncomfortable answer to this is that it was not just about one leader. It was really a systems problem. And I think some of it was on me in it. Systems or cultural problem? Right. I would say it's probably both. Right. And we always have room to improve. This is the pattern that I identify and the pattern that I see in so many growing companies. When you're small, say you have 10 people or 20 people, you kind of want to say yes to stuff, right? And saying yes is a superpower at that point because that is how you build a team. That's how you build trust, it's how you build culture, and it's how you figure out what. What product you're going to have, what product you're going to scale, what works for the company, what works for the clients, what works for your partners. And so it's how you move forward as a business. I also think that everyone chips into everything because you're a small team. And so it's like, nothing is not my job, right? Like, you don't say no to people. And that's a good thing early on, is a good thing to do that early on. But then as you grow, that same instinct that helps you in the beginning, which is very helpful, starts to backfire and go from helpful to harmful, right? Because now oftentimes you've got, you know, some shared services. Maybe you have tech people, media operations, and you have teams that are getting pulled in 10 directions by 10 different people who all think that their thing is the most important thing. And this is the interesting part and the part that sucks, is that your best people, the ones who are reliable and actually producing shit, are the ones who become the fucking dumping ground for all of this. Because everyone knows they'll say yes and that they're competent at the thing, right? That's the curse of competence is that people ask you to do more stuff. And so you end up in this situation where your most capable people are literally doing the most unfocused work that doesn't drive the company forward. And the actual priorities are sitting there either not being worked on, waiting for somebody to just have time in like, the, you know, whatever hour that they have left it back in the day, or they're being worked on by the people who aren't the best people in the company. And so I said this to my team and I say it so that you guys understand this. The things that are harmless at 10 people, 20 people, even 50 people, they are atomic bombs. When you get to 70, 90, 100, whatever. Like, think about the difference in people more than the amount. Like, you could be at one person. And the things you did at with one person, aka yourself, don't work with five. The things you do at five people don't work with 15. The things you do with 15 don't work with 30. Okay? And especially for this, it's really hard because the damage of pursuing a side quest is often delayed. And you do get some immediate gratification because you get to like, scratch the itch here. Like, I'm working on something, I get to make progress. But you don't feel the harm until later. You feel it a quarter later when you're at your fucking quarterly meeting and you see that you're all reds and nothing has shipped and nothing has gotten done. Now this is the part I want to call out and I will say this. I'm just going to be honest with this. It is not something that I do, but it is something that I identified very early on. A lot of founders create these side quests. Okay, why is that? What do founders do that just completely up teams. They go directly to people instead of through their leaders and they say, hey, can you just take a quick look at this? Right? It's like treating your own urgency and your probably emotional problem, not a practical problem, as a justification to talk to that person about something or going directly to somebody and saying, hey, do you think you could build this? Do you think you could do this? Do you think it'd help with this? And that's the thing about being the most powerful. When I say powerful, it means that you can have you create the most action with your words. I'll just say it like that in your company is that the small asks are not small. Put yourself in their shoes, right? You ask somebody to do something, they're not Going to weigh it against their priorities. They are just going to fucking do it because you ask them and they're like, you, at the end of the day, pay me. So, like, I will do whatever you ask. Which means that every time that you bypass the system, you teach the team that the system is optional. Hmm. This is something I learned in the first year of business. And I, I still remind myself to this day because sometimes I will get to the point where I'm like, I really want to fucking do this. Don't do it. Don't fucking do it. Because it's easy and it will fucking work in the short term, but it leads to long term dysfunction in the organization. Right? Because I could go to anybody in my company, I could ask them for help, they would stop everything they're fucking doing to help me. Whether it's to make me happy, to feel secure, to do people please, or because they don't know how to say no. And that is not impressive. That's a liability as you grow. And so for me, I do not do that on purpose. I literally am like, I ask myself every time I want to do that. I'm like, do you have self control? I'm like, yes, I have self control. Okay, don't fucking do it. And then I add it to what I call as my backlog. I have a note section on my phone which has like a backlog of a million different ideas. Okay. And here's the thing. I told my team this. I'm like, if you have a good idea, I promise you it's not like it's ever going to get done. Like a good idea just has to get prioritized. It doesn't mean that it's never going to happen. Just like, maybe not today. And so if I want something in my company, I go through their leader first. And if anything, I will talk to their leader and say, hey, how would you like me to go about asking for this? This is what I need. Do they have too much on their plate? Do they need to deprioritize something? Here's what I see as it being a priority or not. Tell me what else is on their plate. I try to treat my requests with the exact same level of rigor that I would with anybody else in the organization. Because my restraint is just as important in my ideas in the company. So here's the, the rule or like the principle I've landed on and I would urge you to land on too. Work should not start unless it is tied to a top priority and the leader who owns that priority knows about it. That's it. I know it sounds simple. It's not simple because people, it requires people to say no, to push back. It requires leaders to protect their teams and it requires founders to stop treating urgency as everyone's priority or their desire, or their curiosity or their itch, or their. The fact they can, you know, whatever it might be, right? They have extra time. Well, nobody else has fucking extra time. It's so funny because like me and Alex will talk about this and he'll be like, well, you know, I had time. So I came up with this thing. I was like, well, nobody else has time to do anything with it, so it's gonna have to go on the shelf. And so this is the language that you can use if you want to ask for something or you can ask yourself one, is this tied to a current priority? That's simple. Like if you have priorities in your company, you do quarterly planning, you have OKRs, you have milestones to hit. Is this tied to one of the top priorities? Second, who owns it and should we deprioritize something to do it? So then you're asking who's going to own it and should we make a trade off to do this thing? That's important to ask. And the next question I would ask is, well, should we make the trade off now or later, right? Because some people might say, I think it'd be better if we do it now. But then you have to look at the things you're currently doing and then you say, wait, We've spent already 50% of our quarter charging at this priority, this goal. If we stop now, we would have to restart. So now we've lost the time that we've worked on it and we've got to restart later. So now we're essentially doubling how much work it's going to take to get this other thing done, when if we just sought that thing through, it would take less time overall because we're not interrupting. Biggest thing I can give to you guys now, if someone asks your team for something, right, you're a leader, they ask your team whether you're the founder or you're a leader in a company. The answer isn't yes. Never say yes before anything else. Say, let me check with my team, with my leader, look at my Asana board, look at my calendar and see if this fits with our priorities right now a lot of people have this like guilt tied to that, but that is not something to feel guilty for. That is being helpful. That's doing Your job, because protecting your team's focus is the job, especially as you scale, because your team's not going to do it. So if you're not pushing back on what's a priority, who is? What are you training people to do in the organization? All that to say, this is what I've learned in my short time on this earth. Maybe not so short anymore. The best companies, the companies that win, they do not win by doing more things. Like, I promise you guys, like, we have done diligence on countless companies. I've worked with thousands and thousands of companies. I have scaled multiple companies to over nine figures. And they do not win by doing a million things. They win by doing a few things exceptionally fucking well in the right order, which is strategy. What do you do? In what order? That is strategy. The hardest part of scaling is not finding more opportunities, especially when you're growing. Opportunities are everywhere. It is saying no to the ones that feel good and they feel good in the moment and they seem important and they feel like, I need to do it today, but they don't actually matter. Side quests don't ruin businesses because they are bad ideas. They ruin businesses because they steal focus from the ideas that are better and more important for the organization. Period. So if you are building something that matters, if you are building a company that you are trying to take to 7, 8, 9, whatever figures you want, you cannot afford the side quests. Please learn this lesson earlier with less pain than I have. I have had to learn it multiple times in my organization. But you have to remember, like, it starts at the top. If we can't exemplify these things, then we can't expect our teams to follow suit.