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Hey, this is Sharan Trivadsa. Welcome back to the Business School podcast and this is for you. If you are working hard, you are showing up and it feels like you're just not getting anywhere fast enough. This might be the most important episode that I've recorded because it finally puts into words that feeling that so many high performers just can't explain. Why effort is not enough. How to tell if you're kind of in the wrong lane, and how to feel like you're pushing so hard but you're not getting there as fast enough. I break it down all down for you, step by step, starting right now. One thing is for certain, just because it's tried and true doesn't mean it's working right now. So the big question is this. Where can you learn what is working right now? The strategies, the tactics, the psychology, and the exact how to, how to grow your business, how to blow up your personal brand and supercharge your personal growth. That is the question and this podcast will give you the answer. My name is Sharan Srivatha and welcome to Business School Foreign. This is probably going to be one of the shortest but most highly dense and impactful podcast that I can make for you that I hopefully will change your life. So let me kick this off with a picture, by the way. I used to play tennis. I always say that I was a never was has been type tennis player. I tried to hand on the, on the pro tennis tour. I then ended up coaching and teaching tennis. And so I have this love for playing the game and I want to use a tennis example to kick it off for you. If you know Roger Federer, who's probably the greatest of all time, Roger Federer didn't waste his prime years kind of grinding out tennis on clay. And when I, when I say clay, I mean if you're unfamiliar, tennis is played on different surfaces, grass, clay, hard courts, etc. Some surfaces are just not built for you, just like it was not built for Roger. Some surfaces are slower, some surfaces are faster. So the game that you play is different and that's really important. So if you spend your whole career, say pushing on the wrong surface, it really doesn't matter how hard you work, you're never going to feel like you're winning. And that's what I call a vehicle problem. You have level 10 effort in a level 2 vehicle. Like if you are a meant to be a race car driver, but you then take up, you know, cycling, you just in the wrong surface. Can you imagine if Michael Jordan never picked up A basketball. Can you imagine if Tiger woods never picked up a golf club? Can you imagine if Yo Yo Ma never picked up a cello? Can you imagine like if Taylor Swift never picked up a mic? Like, that is where I, I want you to find your vehicle. And what I mean by that is we are raised to believe that if you just kind of push harder and things will eventually kind of, you will get a lucky break. And what, what does that mean? More effort. Everyone talks. More effort, you know, more hours, more hustle, more grind, more, more, more. And that's fine. But at some point you have to realize that when you have level 10 effort and a level 2 vehicle and you're not getting anywhere means that something is not wrong with your effort. Something is wrong with your vehicle. Right? But the thing that I've learned over time is sometimes the smartest move at some point is not to double down. Because when you start to get tired and resentful and you're not making progress, it just means that you're not in the right vehicle. And that's really, really important. And sometimes a smart move, if you will, is to change the table that you're sitting at. If you're working with the same coach or you're working at the same company or you're working for the same boss or you're sleeping on the same bed or you're using the same workout routine and none of them are getting any better. Like, you got to like you, there's, there's something you gotta like, swap out, right? And the, the swap out is not just you if you're giving level 10 effort. And the reason I'm sharing this with you is I was talking to a friend about self awareness the other day. So this is a reason why you don't want to be my friend. Because I'm going to push you all the time. And I don't mean like the soft, fluffy kind because I'm not a sloth fluffy kind of person. I'm like this all the time. I, I mean the brutal version. I do, I have brutal conversations because the depth of the conversation, the honesty of the conversation is our important conversations. And the, it's like the one kind of where you ask yourself, where do these odds kind of go in my favor, right? Where do I feel like I'm in my zone? Where do I feel like I'm the Mike Michael Jordan where I could kind of place the ball anywhere and get the result? Where do I walk into a room and I feel like the energy is all pointing my way? Where Do I feel like I am king or I am queen or I am winning? So if you don't know the answer to that, there's a good chance I would say that you're burning your best energy level 10 effort in places that you're not set up to reward you. Level two vehicle, right? That is what I want to tell you about today. So I think, think about right? Imagine being on. But this is crazy. Like dating analogies work for everything. Imagine being on a dating app and you are an average guy. I'm sorry, the math is not built for you. You will not get any action right? Or it's like trying to bootstrap like a SaaS company and you don't have any distribution. You build a great product and now you're looking on for years of like man, I got a couple of users for years. Or you then take like a corporate path and you're, you're a corporate path and you're a corporate person. But your best skill is originality or creativity or leadership. Like you will never grow in that because the, the cor. What does corporate do? They claim to be innovative, but they put you in a box and make you work in your role. Like it does not work, right? And so the environment will crush the very thing that makes you special. And that's what I want you to know. Like that's why when, when we are in a massing hiring spree@acquisite.com and we want to make the environment non linear if we find a person in a great role and they're like hey, my next, you know, advancement X, you don't care about the next advancement. If you think, if you succeed in this role, we want the environment to make you win. The environment will crush the very thing that makes you special. So when this happened I honestly will tell you that it is not that you're failing as a person, it's the odds that, that that game are just stacked against you. Again, level 10 effort with a level 2 vehicle, you're going to lose, right? And so the way out, I will tell you is not more effort, it's not more resilient, it's not more power through. It's not more, more. It is like you got it. It's the way out is awareness and selection. People always talk about this whole like if you, if you're in the tech world, you've heard of product market fit, I, I have this tongue in cheek way of saying it's a you market fit. What is a you market fit? Where in the world do you fit perfectly? And I will tell you this. Some people are meant to be founders. Some are meant for scale. Some are meant to shine in smaller rooms. Some are meant to come alive in chaos. Some should never have a boss again. Some should always have a boss. And once you see that clearly, that's where freedom comes from. Like I will tell you, I talk to people all the time and they say, sean, I want to start a company. And I'm like, bro, if everyone in the world wanted to be a CEO of a company, there would be no other people. Like, imagine if every single person was a CEO. Like that doesn't make any sense, right? The world doesn't work like that. You have to find your gift. It's not about, it's not about being a CEO or the founder or your own boss. It's not what it is. That is not what this is all about. You really have to find, not be in level 10 effort and level 2 vehicle. So I'll give you, I'll give you my own story, right? For me, what I discovered was I struggled for a while. I did a bunch of different things. I was a software engineer, I was a founder, I was a, you know, I was a tennis pro, I was an investment banker. You know, I did private equity. I operated a business like it was crazy. And so what I really discovered and when I found kind of my level 10 vehicle was I realized that I was really good at one thing. And I, you know, everyone's good at a few things, but I realized that I got a lot of energy from what I call growth infrastructure. Not just growth, not just infrastructure, but the thinking process of the combination of both, which is growth infrastructure. Like big, big things. Don't, don't make me afraid. Like I, I do, I can do very well in a thousand, ten thousand, hundred thousand, two million person company. Like, I can do big things, but I don't do very well in like a four person startup. Like, that's not my jam for a day. I can advise that well. But for me, I do well with a lot of scale and I can think like that. So because I could think in systems, I could do, I could look around corners, I could see how like money and finance and legal and tech and brand all kind of snap together. To me, like marketing for a lot of people was not about ads. To me. Real estate was not about like homes and properties. They were both vehicles right inside of a bigger growth system. To me it was growth infrastructure. And like what lit me up, right, was building the system underneath and if I was given always the front facing role, like I actually enjoyed building the infrastructure, building the systems, because to me that's what it is. And that's what I want to tell you where that's why I built businesses that were easier to sell. I will always, to me, building businesses that run on their own, building businesses that are easier to sell, building businesses that operate well is very natural to me because that's why they weren't like personality driven. A lot of people have personality driven businesses. Their brand is on the front of the business. But even when in all the businesses that I stepped out of, they worked fine after I left. Now, sure, you have your magic sauce, but they worked fine, they ran fine because it was growth, infrastructure was built into that. And like heck, I would go back and buy my own companies because the systems were that sound. And this is where I want to give you the gift of today, which is I realized my superpower. I realized, and by the way, you have it too. We're all X men and X women in some way. Each one of us has our own superpower. We all have our own gifts. And I'll tell you why this is true. If you are a parent, you know this. When you look at a child, one of your children or a child, you see a superpower in them that you see that, hey, you're really sharp, you're really talented, you're really good at this, you're really good. You see that when a parent can see it in their child, when the child just can't see it in themselves, right? You have a superpower and your entire job of your life is to find the purity of that superpower. Dan Sullivan calls it unique ability. I really like that word. It's like, what is your unique ability? Where does it fit? And how do you surround yourself with other people's unique ability that help grow the thing, right? So I'll tell you what I found. I found my superpower. I found what made me happy. I found what was important to me and I call it Lego Blocks of Leverage. I give it a name. As you know, again, this is also I. It's a meta concept, right? I found my superpower and I gave it a name. And that itself is a Lego block. I call it Lego Blocks of Leverage. So I see everything as a Lego block. Like, what block can I build that plugs into this business? What block can I build that becomes a playbook for that department? What block can I build that becomes a template here? What block can I hand you right now? In this podcast that you can drop straight into your world. And I love building these Lego blocks, like, tight little bubbles of focus, if you will, that can. You can take them and, like, install them quickly and be. And reuse them forever. That's why I probably have built more LEGO blocks and forgotten about them than most people will ever build. And that's why I don't need to rebuild from scratch every time. So every time you drop me into a new company, into a new business, if I'm an advisor in your business, if I'm a board member in your business, like, I can come up with stuff so much faster. The stuff that will take you, you, 3, 6, 12, 18 months, I probably have a LEGO block for it. And because everything for me is modular. And when you, when you slot in modular things, you don't have to reinvent thinking, you don't have to, quote, reinvent the wheel, because I already have the wheel, right? And everything starts to compound. Now, it may not be the perfect wheel, but it'll start running right away. And then you could tweak along the way. So my gift is a LEGO block of leverage. But here's the funny part that I really am trying to tell you. I talked about this earlier, which is if everybody wanted to be a founder and a CEO, right, then the world will not have any businesses. You will have seven and a half billion founders and CEOs, and no one will do anything right. And I realized this, that I realized that, man, if my gifting is, as my amazing advisors and money coaches, Russ Morgan and Joey Murray will say, my gifting, you know, if my gifting is these LEGO blocks of leverage, then I realized something. I had to make a choice. In fact, I was gifted to make this choice. I didn't care about having, quote, the top job anymore. I didn't care about the title anymore. I didn't care about being CEO anymore. I didn't care about any of that. What I wanted was the biggest version of the role that lets me do my best work, that lets me build more LEGO blocks of leverage. That's all I cared about. And when I did that, my entire life changed. And a role where I can have influence, where I can build the systems that are designed for scale, where I can do the work that I feel called to do, the work produced by, by the way, I will tell you, I made way more money than I ever expected and way more money than I care to admit. But, like, that was not the driver. All of it changed when I realized that I saw the world in Lego blocks. And that was my superpower. And that was where. That was the gift that I brought to the table. That's why I'm a good advisor. That's why I can be a good coach. That's why I can share, like a succinct version of this on the podcast. That way, that's why I can take each day and compress it and build something, you know, in a tight bubble of total focus and deliver it and so that it would work without me. Now you should, you should. There's thousands of people like me. You should probably have one of them around you because you'll grow and scale much faster. But I figured out that that's what makes me tick. And I say this all to you, is what about you? That's why this episode is so important. If mine is Lego blocks of leverage, what is yours? Your job is to find your unique ability. And you may say, well, Sean, that's super interesting. Like, what the heck? That's so fufu. It's not fufu. I'm telling you. I'm talking about so much like joy and money and success and, and, and, I don't know, delight and growth that you, I'm telling you in a lot of ways, right, you, outside of me not having six pack abs, like, you want to swap, like, your life with me. Like, I have a really, like, I have. Not saying I'm very fortunate, but it's been very intentional. And the point here is I'm trying to, like, package this up and share it with you so that you can get this. And this was the turning point for me to figure out that I did not need the top job, I did not need the accolades, I did not need any of that. I just wanted the biggest version of the work that I can do. I just wanted to build more Lego blocks of leverage. That's all I really care about. So my point is you have to figure out your own Lego blocks. You have to figure out, you know, in the Roger Federal world, not to play on clay, but play on grass. And I want to give you like. So I stopped and thought about this. And this is essentially the two minutes that you should pay attention to. Where do you start? What are the three filters that you can use to start here? So here are the three filters. The three Es, E number one is the energy. What makes time disappear for you? If three hours feels like three minutes, that's a Lego block. That's insane. Like, you want to do work that makes time just go by so quickly, right? Now when I work, I'm just amazed that it's. I start working. I mean, I wake up at 4:45am Before I know it, it's like 4:45pm And I'm like, where did this day go? And I've done. I've built so many Lego blocks of leverage. So from an energy perspective, what do you do that. When you do that, time disappears for you. Where three hours feels like three minutes, and you can't say, well, it's me sitting by the pool. Like, that's not it. Like, come on, let's be real. What makes time disappear for you? What gives you energy? Number two, you gotta have some kind of edge, right? Where do you feel like you consistently win? Where do you feel like when you do the thing, even when the odds say that you shouldn't win, where do you win? This may be a little harder, but I would just look back at your life and look at the positive things that happened and think about the similarities of when they happened. Maybe you talked to this. Maybe you. Maybe your last five great clients. What was similar among all of them? Maybe your last five big deals, what was similar among all of them? Maybe your last five big projects, what was similar among all of them? Maybe your last five great relationships, what was similar among all of them? Maybe your last five great coaches, what was similar among all of them? Maybe your last five, you know, great personal accomplishments. Oh, similar among all of them. What was the edge like? You. Something that you did, made you win. What is that thing that made you win? And the way to check that out is if you took that thing out, you would not have won, or at least not as easily. What gave you the edge, right? And you can hypothesize, but you'll find it pretty quickly. And sometimes it's like sitting there in plain sight for you to see. The world is sitting there in plain sight for you to see. You just have to ask for it intelligently. And the third and most favorite thing for me is what's ease. What feels natural to you but looks hard to everyone else. Joe Polish has this thing says you need an elf business, not a half business. You want elf E L F, which is easy, lucrative and fun. You don't want a half business, which is hard, annoying, lame and frustrating. I really like that. You know, you can always ask him, like, hey, is this an elf client or half client? Is this easy, lucrative and fun? Or is this hard, annoying, lame and frustrating? And by the way, it freaks out a lot of people when you say this. Is easy and lucrative and fun because you feel like you're making money and you don't deserve to be making that money. It's that easy. I've had several relationships, partners, clients, companies that I invested in, et cetera, where it was all elf. It was easy, lucrative, and fun. And that it was easy. Not because I didn't do work is actually because I did more. I didn't realize how much work that I did because it was in my unique ability, it was in my gifting, it was in my zone of genius. It was in my Lego blocks of leverage, energy. What makes time disappear for you? Edge. Where do you consistently win, even if the odds are against you? And ease. What feels so natural to you, but it looks hard for everyone else? I will tell you, like, this is the hard truth. Life feels like a total grind when you're playing the wrong game. Like when you're playing on your Federer and you're playing on. On clay, and I don't know how to tell you, but no motivational speech will fix that. You're going to see some random Instagram court and be like, oh, yeah, we should kind of do that. But it's not that. The. The second you quote, lock in to your real surfer, stop playing on clay. And the second you, like, start stacking your Lego blocks, the things that works for you in your favorite, you win big time. Everything will change for lack of, like, being tacky. Your. Your grind becomes kind of like this glide. It becomes cool. This. This force will turn into flow and make you feel. Sorry, I was just trying to find an alliteration here that, like, my Lego block kind of flow. The reason I'm sharing this with you is when you find your thing, when you find your gifting with the three E's, right, you can put in unreasonable endurance into your work. Because when you put in unreasonable endurance, you don't feel like three hours. You feel like three minutes. Because now you're not forcing it. You're playing the game that you were designed to play, that you were gifted to play. Naval Ravikant, if you know him, super cool dude. I've never met him personally. I love his pithy sayings. He has this line. He says it should feel like play to you, but it should look like work to others. Should feel like play to you, but look like work to others. This thing is insane. That is the test. That is how you know you're founded. That is how you know you're going to win. By the way, I will tell you, it is never about chasing the title or the next zero in your net worth. It will come. I promise you. Those things are distractions to you. Finding your gifting the real game. I. I don't know how. The real game is building the Lego blocks of leverage that only you can build. That is where you win. That is where you've been, big time. So my challenge for you is this. This week, this month, this day. Like, spend five minutes, sit down with yourself and say, where do I feel energy? Where do I have the edge and where do I find the ease? And if you can do that, I think you win. Because when you do that, you will never feel like you're grinding anymore. All right. Hey, I hope you like this. If you like this, do me a favor and take a screenshot and tag me. That way I can make more like this for you. Again, do me a favor, take a screenshot and tag me and I can make more like this for you. Hey, this is Charon. I have an awesome free gift for you just for listening to the podcast. As you may know, I've got a chance to build $2 billion companies the hard way. So if you like this episode, you will love getting the exact playbooks from those wins. It's on my sub stack called My next billion. It has the exact frameworks I wish someone had given me when I was figuring it all out. Now you get the real lessons from the trenches as I go for a three peat and build the next billion. So everything's free at my next billion dot com. Please check it out. My Next billion dot com.