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Success Story with Scott D. Clary
Lessons - Why Great Investors Burn the Boats | Matt Higgins - RSE Ventures CEO & Shark Tank Investor
00:15:26
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- [00:00]
A
LinkedIn ads is a Success Story partner. Now I get served the worst ads like I'm a 35 year old guy running a podcast and a business and I'm seeing ads for retirement communities and cat food and I don't have a cat. Someone paid for that impression and it was completely wasted on me. So when you want to reach the right professionals, use LinkedIn ads. Over a billion professionals, 130 million decision makers you can target by job title, seniority, industry, company size, you're actually reaching the people who can say yes. LinkedIn ads delivers the highest B2B return on ad spend of any major ad network. Not just some of them, all of them. So here's the deal. Spend $250 on your first campaign and get a $250 credit on your next campaign. Just go to LinkedIn.com success. That's LinkedIn.com success. Terms and conditions apply. Northwest Registered Agent is a success story partner. Now when I first started my business, I had no idea how much goes into just existing legally, right? LLC paperwork, registered agent, business address, compliance. I was googling at 2am trying to figure out what all this meant and if you're starting something right now, I am telling you, don't do it that way. Northwest Registered Agent lets you build your complete business identity in just 10 clicks and 10 minutes. We're talking LLC formation, domain name, business email, phone number, business address, registered agent and compliance all for just $39 plus state fees. They've been doing this for almost 30 years. Largest registered agent service in the country with over 1,500 corporate guides who are actual humans who know your state's laws and we'll walk you through it. Don't wait. Protect your privacy, build your brand and get your complete business identity in just 10 clicks and 10 minutes. Visit northwestregisteredagent.com paid success and start building something amazing. Get more with Northwest registered agent@northwestregisteredagent.com paid success in this lessons episode, explore why defiance rather than bitterness often fuels extraordinary success and sustained growth. Discover how high performers cultivate self belief to reject mediocrity. Understand why eliminating a safety net sharpens focus and decision making and uncover how confronting internal and external obstacles creates momentum without leading to burnout. You know what the one thing that I see emulated in a lot of successful individuals? It's always a chip on the shoulder. It's always the we got it. There's a reason why you're so clear on your vision and there's a re like you didn't just drop out of high school. And again, like a lot of other kids who dropped out of high school, maybe they had. Maybe they had alternative career choices. You're very purposeful and strategic. But that chip on your shoulder. I always. The burn the boats is a great concept, but the chip on the shoulder makes it possible. And you had this environment that forced you to not have an anger, but just have a little bit of unhappiness with the situation that you were in. So I always like to pull out that origin story. But then I also like to ask you, how does somebody manufacture that feeling? Because that's what it takes to be successful.
- [03:19]
B
I love this question, by the way I talk about it in the book, you know, the Burn the Boats, when I break down these common patterns of successful individuals, successful leaders, and you isolated one of them, which is Defiance. I actually, I use an industrial psychologist way too much. Everybody's always you and the psychologist. But like, I think the fish rots from the head, right? So I always try to get the head right and look under the hood when I'm making writing a check. But one of the qualities that she identified that repeats over and over again is defiance. That when you're overly deferential to the status quo or to others, you can't have breakout success. So while, you know, I like the way you distinguish it, I don't really have a chip on my shoulder. I'm not bitter. I left that experience incredibly empathetic, and I retain that empathy. But I am defiant, and I have found the worst decisions I've made of when I've tried to outsource my judgment to supposed experts. Because a exceptional generalist will have much better judgment than a mediocre specialist all day long. And so defiance is a career thing. So how do you manufacture it a bit? One, you had to believe it, that it's necessary. And two, honestly, it stems from self worth. Like, if you really believe in yourself and believe in your destiny and believe that there's better for you and you're not entitled to better for, but deserving of better for, you will seek it out and you'll be defiant. When somebody's trying to force you to accept mediocrity, we see it manifest all the time in the relationship context. When I see somebody tolerating a partner who's putting them down, putting them in their place, you know, or is just unhappy, it's usually for one of two reasons. One, you don't believe you deserve better, or two, you don't believe better exists. Right? And they're very. They're nuanced and are different. But if you approach every situation with a degree of defiance, where your base case is, what's the best I can have in this situation? You will always be a little bit wary of accepting mediocrity for yourself.
- [05:15]
A
That's a great. That's a great answer. I love that. And I've never heard chip on the shoulder reframed as defiance, but it's a much more positive way to look at it. I've never.
- [05:22]
B
Yeah, because people will say to me, you still got a chip. I'm like, I actually don't have a chip. I, like, cry in, like, a heartbeat when somebody. When I encounter somebody else's pain, I have the opposite of a chip. You know, I have defiance and insistence and unrelenting energy. But. But I'm not bitter.
- [05:38]
A
So. Okay, so let. Now. Now you've moved yourself out of this really destitute situation that you're in. Burn the boats at later stages in your career. What does that actually look like for you?
- [05:52]
B
So, and. And I think it's good to frame a little bit what the phrase mean, why I became obsessed with this idea.
- [05:57]
A
Actually, because I think we've heard. Some of us have heard this before, but I've never heard somebody go so into the weeds on it.
- [06:02]
B
Yeah, yeah. No, it's funny. I remember I was with Mark Cuban at an event, and I made this burn, you know, burn the boats reference. And he's like, burn the boats? What are you talking about? And I was like, oh, I thought. I thought this is sort of, like, in the vernacular. And I realized it's not entirely. So what. Where does the phrase come from? Throughout recorded history, from time immemorial, you'll see military strategists will invoke this idea that they way. The way they got their army to overcome improbable odds, they were outnumbered 10 to 1. Whatever the case is, that they literally burned the boats. They eliminated their escape out their escape hatch. Art of War, they refer to burn the boats and the cooking pots. And the reason why is that humans perform better when they have no plan B. They have no, you know, escape route. Now, these tend to be some pretty nasty people in history. So I've. I've appropriated this military doctrine and decided to use it for the rest of us in peacetime. So let's forget Caesar, you know, Sun Tzu and Cortez, and pull it forward for our own life. So I got obsessed with this idea, and then when I worked for the new York Jets. For those who don't know, I used to oversee the business of the New York jets back in the day, and I worked with Rex Ryan as a coach. And, you know, Rex is this animated individual, wears his heart on his sleeve and can fire anybody up. And we were playing the Pittsburgh Steelers in the playoffs and the underdog, and Rex gave a speech about this idea of burn the boats. I'm just asking you to go all in for one day. And don't worry about what happens if we fail. Don't worry about the consequences. Just give me everything you got for one quarter. One half. It was. I think it was a halftime speech. No, it was the night before, for one day. And the team won. And you could feel it was palpable in the room. How catalytic, this idea of just surrender to the goal, submit, let it go. And so I said, okay, that I want to prove to people that humans perform better without a safety net. And I want to approach it from two different angles. One, I want to approach it empirically. So I want to survey history, psychology, and science to prove that humans actually perform better without a plan B. And the reason why is when a lot of folks hear the title of this book, they reflexively say, well, I can't take on risk. This is irresponsible. It's called Burn the Boats, not Burn the Boats with you in it. And it's not called Blow up the Bridges. Right? So the idea is eliminate your plan B. That doesn't. Part of the process of doing so is actually processing the worst case scenario. One of the. I talk about this in the book. One of the first steps is to synthesize and recognize what's the worst that can happen if this big move I'm about to make goes wrong. And by doing that, you now can peacefully accept the risk because you've already processed, you know, the downside. So one, I want to approach it from science and history and psychology, but the other is I want to provide actionable case studies, illustrations, so that you wouldn't distance yourself from the individual. What do I mean by that? Like, I'm on Shark Tank. If you met me and I look well dressed, you can make lots of assumptions about me. I teach at Harvard Business School. You could assume that I was born on third base, right? I want to deconstruct who I am so you see the origin and the journey. And you could say, oh, you were a high school dropout. Oh, you have imposter syndrome. You were divorced and you're embarrassed by it, and you went Through a lot of pain.
- [09:09]
A
You.
- [09:09]
B
You suffer from anxiety. You have a degree of lingering ptsd. You're not over your stuff. Right? Like, it's very important to me to manifest in this world as a representation of how I got there, not where I am. And I then broke down 50 different individuals that. That from every different angle. Founders, billionaires, actresses. Scarlett Johansson is a friend of mine, an Olympian who became a paraplegic at 14 and thinks her life is better off for it. An activist who is the victim of sexual abuse when she was a child from her nanny. Every angle. So that those who reflexively say, I can't afford to burn the boats, and I can't afford to let go of my plan B, and those people are different from me. I wanted to offer so many different case studies that it would be hard not to identify with something. And the second part, Instagram is full of so many, you know, empty platitudes, you know, sunny advice, like, burn the boats. You know, get out there. Like, that stuff is useless. It doesn't last more than 30 seconds. A little adrenaline hit. I hope what I've done with the book is provided an actionable blueprint to. To. For. To embrace a growth mindset and to just let go, like, shed your shame, shed the things that are holding you back, and move beyond the rhetoric into actually actionable advice.
- [10:26]
A
And. Okay, so let's. So let's lay out, like, a little bit of this framework, um, so people can understand it. So what is. What is the framework that you actually teach over? Cause obviously, this is probably something that you've seen, again, across all those leaders that you just mentioned. You've probably seen it with, I'm assuming, some of the successful investments you made on Shark Tank, obviously in your own life as well. So what's. What are the. The main points of that framework?
- [10:46]
B
Okay, great. It's. It's all. Well, one, number one, the whole concept is premised on the idea that the true joy of living is in the striving. And, you know, when you go to the top of the mountaintop and you look around, you realize there's nothing to see. That the joy was the climbing when you were looking up, trying to get there, not looking down and looking around. So that's number one. So I think. I think that's true for, like, 99% of the population. So we begin there. So how do you live a life of perpetual growth? And how do you. And the things that stand in our way are either internal obstacles and external obstacles. So I say any journey of transcendence. Crossing the threshold to make that bull move begins by unlocking the greatest arbitrage entirely within our control, which is self awareness. Right. It's figuring out what is it in me that's preventing me from making that bold move. You know, it's whether it's imposter syndrome. And I talk about how to overcome it, whether it's shame. I think a lot of the reasons why leaders underperform is because they haven't gone through the exercise of shedding shame. So how do you create a place and space for you to go ahead and. And let go of your vulnerability? It's how do you retrain the voice in your head to be your greatest ally rather than your greatest enemy? I talk a lot about sabotage, and so it's a little bit similar to what I do when I'm assessing an investment, is I analyze and look under the hood because the fish rots from the head, as the Italians say. So you need to undertake that own exercise for yourself. My book takes you through the journey of how I did it myself, but how other leaders have reflected upon what's holding them back and overcome those internal obstacles. And then there are the external obstacles that stand in your way. I go through the. The corporate saboteurs, you know, and I tried to put into words things we all feel, and I'll make it a little abstract. They are these archetypes that manifest in a corporate setting as leaders, CEOs, managers, and they're either victims, they're martyrs, they're corporate gaslighters. The one that I think a lot of people can relate to is this idea of a withholder. So what's a withholder? A withholder is someone who recognizes that an employee or a partner in a relationship context is a pleaser and is dependent upon validation and affirmation in order to sustain themselves. Right. And they understand that if they. If they withhold that recognition, that praise, they destabilize that individual, that pleaser, and they'll work that much harder to go ahead and over and get that approval. Right. So there are. I tried to, in the book, deconstruct these unsaid things that operate upon us, that hold us back, that prevent us from going. That destabilize us so that if you can identify it, you can deal with it. And I. I love the withholder one because when I mentioned this to people, oh, I feel that. I feel like somebody is denying me the praise that I need. And I'm. And one, I'm sad that I can't get it? And two, I'm sad that I need it. And so I think what you find when you read the book, again, that's pretty abstract stuff we're talking about, but, you know, you can reduce these things that are operating on us, that are holding us back into words, articulate them, and then manage them. And so for each of these ideas, I come up with strategies for how to. How to move beyond them and talk about how I did it in my own personal life.
- [13:55]
A
And one thing you mentioned, you mentioned perpetual growth. And then when you adopt this mindset, this is almost a forever mindset that you apply to your life. So for people listening, this could be very stressful because now they're thinking, oh, if I really want to make it, I always have to be uncomfortable. I always have to be growing. I always have to, you know, I got the next career advancement, or I launched the side hustle, turned it into a company, 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 enjoy the journey, but does this not turn into perpetual stress, perpetual discontent? How do you mitigate that so that you still enjoy what you're doing if you're always putting yourself into this position of high stress, high growth?
- [14:38]
B
Such a great question. I talk about this in the book too, because if positioned the wrong way, you'd be like, stop, I'm good. So a couple of thoughts on that. It is only stressful if you live in a perpetual place of anticipation. If you're never present, if you're always worried and thinking about what's going to happen. The downside. I talk a lot in my book about how to. How to retain your group grip on the moment and how much contemplating my own mortality factors into this philosophy. I have an app on my phone call. We croak five times a day. It sounds actually crazy, but five times a day. And in different ways, it reminds me that I'm going to die. It's a different philosophical message from Socrates or somebody else.
- [15:20]
A
It's a little bit of stoicism built into that.
- [15:22]
B
That's right. A little bit. A lot of. Bit of stoicism. Right on the simple idea that. That when you're reminded of your mortality, the number one thing that we all fear, it actually does the opposite of what we're afraid of. It makes us peacefully locked in on the moment. So, number one, in order to have a joyful life of perpetual pursuit, you actually have to stay present, which is counterintuitive. The second thing is it's okay to take a break. It's okay to. I talk in the book about consolidating gains. You achieve a new milestone, you consolidate it. You go ahead and you lock it in. You don't want to be a grasshopper where you're jumping from one team into the next. The point is, sooner or later, if you're like most people, melancholy will set in because you don't feel challenged. So my. The point of the book is not you have to perpetually jump in a frantic way from one thing to the next. The sequence is burn the boats. Achieve what you previously thought was unachievable, consolidate your gains, because what's the point of achieving things? And then the accomplishment is eroded because you didn't focus enough to make it scale. Scale yourself. Right. So that it works in your app's absence or with less energy. Right. I talk in the book. How I taught at Harvard Business School was really, really hard the first time, the second time, less hard third time. Every time you re repeat something through habituation, you unlock more energy for you to allocate to something else. So again, I want to make very clear. Anybody listening? I'm not arguing that you have to live a life of perpetual discontent. I'm asserting that eventually you will feel melancholy like every Olympian, a marathon runner who finishes the race, and you will want another race. And so the, the, the thing that holds us back are these internal and external obstacles. I try to deconstruct them so that you can figure out how to one, burn the boats, two, consolidate the gains and then three, continue on.
- [17:08]
A
Thanks for tuning in. If you found this valuable, don't forget to hit that subscribe button so you never miss an episode. And if you want to dive deeper into this conversation, check out the links in the description to watch the full episode. See you in the next one. Foreign. LinkedIn ads is a success story, partner. Now, I get served the worst ads. Like I'm a 35 year old guy running a podcast and a business and I'm seeing ads for retirement communities and cat food and I don't have a cat. Someone paid for that impression and it was completely wasted on me. So when you want to reach the right professionals, use LinkedIn ads. Over a billion professionals, 130 million decision makers you can target by job title, seniority, industry, company size. You're actually reaching the people who can say yes. LinkedIn ads delivers the highest B2B return on ad spend of any major ad network. Not just some of them, all of them. So here's the deal. Spend $250 on your first campaign and get a $250 credit on your next campaign. Just go to LinkedIn.com success that's LinkedIn.com success. Terms and conditions apply. Northwest Registered Agent is a success story. Partner now. When I first started my business, I had no idea how much goes into just existing legally, right? LLC paperwork, registered agent, business address, compliance. I was googling at 2am trying to figure out what all this meant and if you're starting something right now, I am telling you, don't do it that way. Northwest Registered Agent lets you build your complete business identity in just 10 clicks and 10 minutes. We're talking LLC formation, domain name, business email, phone number, business address, registered agent and compliance all for just $39 plus state fees. They've been doing this for almost 30 years. Largest registered agent service in the country with over 1,500 corporate guides who are actual humans who know your state's laws and will walk you through it. Don't wait. Protect your privacy, build your brand and get your complete business identity in just 10 clicks and 10 minutes. Visit northwestregisteredagent.com paid success and start building something amazing. Get more with Northwest registered agent@northwestregisteredagent.com paid success.