Ryan Rutan: Welcome back to the episode of the start up therapy podcast. This is Ryan Rutan from start ups dot com. Joined as always by Will Schroder, my friend, the founder and CEO of start ups dot com. Will, we're uh we're quite a ways into this adventure. You're 30 ish years into, into your founding career. Are you driven by fear by greed? What, what is it that motivates us in this start of life?
Wil Schroter: I love the idea that there's a choice, right? Like um there's this idea like, I wish I was this guy that was this like just endlessly ambitiously greedy and just had to have more kind of guy. That guy sounds awesome. No, it's like a first. It was as much of a villain as he is. He's the Gordon Gecko of Wall Street kind of villain. I'm like, I wish I had that kind of confidence, right? Like I've been driven by nothing but fear and if we're 30 years into this, I'm still driven by fear. And when I see people talk about this, when I see people like, like, like Bemoan some entrepreneur, let's take Elon Musk, who's like everybody's favorite villain right now. Right. Oh my God. You know, he's just pretty billionaire, blah, blah, blah. Like, you know how hard that guy had to work in absolute nonstop panic fear in order to have the luxury of being greedy act like it was some lottery ticket he won. It's amazing to me. So, so when people talk about our entrepreneurs driven by fear or greed, I want to unpack that today and talk about kind of a couple dimensions. One, there's not a lot of greed to begin with. It's kind of all fear and why and two why we should all be aspiring to greed in a way that I think people will understand and appreciate not just the evil way that everybody sees it. So I think the first thing we should talk about is day one month, one year, one year 10, looking back Ryan on all the stuff you've done, right? How much of that time was you waking up in the morning? Saying I can't believe how greedy I'm going to be.
Ryan Rutan: What am I gonna take from someone else today that I don't specifically need for my myself? Right? Where do you even have the choice? Yeah. You know, after I, I was swimming in my money vault Scrooge mcduck style and I look out the window at all the plebeians wandering around Hungary and then I flip coins in my hand while staring out. Yeah, it it never happened in my entire life. This
Wil Schroter: concept of entrepreneurs being driven by greed. It's like, OK, hold on back up for a second. Do you understand how we actually do what we do? Like we start from nothing. We get into a place where we have more. Nothing. Then in short order we have negative nothing.
Ryan Rutan: I was gonna say, don't, don't forget the negative state, right? Where we, where we have where we have less. Yeah. That, that's a fun time to be greedy. Would you like to share some of my debt? No. Oh my God.
Wil Schroter: Right. Like it's so funny because like when I look back in the, the early early days when I'm starting my first company and I am just, I, I'm buried in debt, right? I'm $100,000 in personal debt, which it is still a lot today. But dude, that was 30 years ago when minimum wage was around like $5 your ability to make it back was was not gonna happen.
Ryan Rutan: You weren't digging your way out of that anytime soon. Yeah. Right. Right.
Wil Schroter: Right. And that was real debt like money that I actually owed personally, not just like some angel investor gave it to me and, and, and we, you know, default on a convertible note or something, but all that said. So, so at that moment as I'm laying in bed at three in the morning staring at the ceiling, there's no version of me going. Oh, I feel so greedy. Right now, which is essentially the path in the life that 99% of founders are living at any given time. So this thought that they were greedy all along again, I'm like, are you sure you understand how this works? I feel very greedy.
Ryan Rutan: Yeah. And again, like people taking pot shots that I think that it's, it's so often from this purely external perspective. Do you know who I generally don't see, Do this other founders, other founders? II I never sitting down with the founder and be like, hey Jer. So and so exited that asshole took X off the table like nobody's ever said that, right? Like you, you might question sometimes you're like, wow, they, they did that well or oh, that's all that came off the table. But like, but it's never a question of like, oh why did they decide to keep all that? Right? Uh Well, because they put their time effort, blood sweat, tears, fear into, into creating whatever that value was that they were able to extract at the end. But let's also remind ourselves how few of the founders who are out there founding things, building things working through that blood sweat, tears and fear actually get to the point where there's anything accumulated, you could even possibly want to hoard and keep to yourself, right? Like, so let's see. Um uh mountain of anxiety. Should I keep all that to myself? Right? Oh The mounting debt should I keep that to myself. Right. What else? What else should I be greedy about at this early stage or even the late stage? Because again, like most founders are not going to get to a point where there's some massive exit where we can even look at it and go OK, there's, they don't deserve all of that, that they're taking off the table right now.
Wil Schroter: There's some like exponential outcome, right? Like I look at it and I'm like, I was watching a documentary on Corns. Tilt a while back. The history channel one. the, the, the men who made this or something like that. Yeah, it's incredible. And they're talking about how he was like a street fighting thug in his early years, right? Weren't we? All right? But that's not what he's known for, right? He's known for being this big business tycoon and a bully and like all these things. But it's kind of like, people just forget that whole path of what made him him straight up fear, like straight up fear and fear is a powerful, persistent unforgettable motivator. That's actually a good thing if channeled, right? And a horrible thing, if not channeled. Right?
Ryan Rutan: Man. The line on that tipping point is so fine too. Right. There have been times where I, I can go back in time and remember like, really being on the right side of fear where it was just like, really motivational. It's like we've got to make this happen, right? We don't have a choice. We have to make this right now. We have 30 days to, to fix this. We have 30 days to generate revenue, 60 days, whatever it was. I can also remember being on the other side, right, just on the other side of that precipice things go downhill really fast. And, and I remember being in positions where it was like, I was heroized by fear and that's a bad thing. I think I told this story once before on the podcast. But there was this point where when I would hear my phone ring, I would get really sleepy. Why? Well, I've come to find out that's called depression and anx anxiety. But when my phone would ring, it meant that somebody was calling to ask me for more money that I didn't have to tell me they weren't gonna pay me the money that I needed, right? Or to chase me on something that wasn't getting done because I didn't have the money to pay the people that need to do it. Right. So it was just awful. Right? Nobody, nobody was calling me greedy. At that point. Nobody seemed to want to share in any of
Wil Schroter: that. It's funny, you know, when I was in those formative years, I had so many things that went wrong for a period, I'd gotten mono. Right. I was like 19 years old. I was in college. I just started the company and I got mono. I was in bed for three months straight. Like I was just stricken, I lost like £40 at a time in my life 19 where I didn't have £40 to lose. Just
Ryan Rutan: get ready to ask. Can we get mono again? Will you want to go on a mono vacation with mono so badly right now? Right. The rest and weight loss sound fantastic. Where, where can I sign up for that plan?
Wil Schroter: I was sleeping 18 hours a day. But at that time, no one was calling me saying, oh you greedy bastard. So now, right. But so I, I think about that and I'm trying to, I'm trying to think like, yes, I had an ambition and all the things that I've done, right? Sure, I had ambition and you have to. But if we're really talking about what got me out of bed, it was never ambition. And here's, here's what I'd also say because, because it's really interesting to me at this point in life, probably do a different podcast about this fear has driven all of my greatest professional outcomes, right? You know, kind of taking you from this poor kid to make some money and this, this really horrible life, right to a good life. You know, that I'm really proud of. However 30 years later, that gear inside me has not left and that's where it gets really dangerous. Right? Imagine you've got the typical angel and the devil on each of your shoulders, right? And the devil is telling you just work harder, put in more hours, you know, to hell with your body, right? You know, and then the angel is like, yeah, but you know, take care of yourself, but this is gonna pay off someday, right? I've ignored the angel. I'm like, yeah, whatever, dude, I can tell you
Ryan Rutan: this, the angel has been wrong about the time frames, at least in 100% of the cases. Right. That angel told me like, yeah, this should work out in about six months, five years later.
Wil Schroter: Right. Right. And so, so I was perpetually driven by the devil who said you have to work harder and, and to get out of your situation. Right. Well, now 30 years later, the devil just has different sales pitch. Now, what he tells me is if I don't work harder, you're gonna lose it all and go back to that. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. And so I joke with you and I, I tell you that I've got two modes, I've got working all the time or feeling guilty about not working all the time and there's no other mode and by the way, it's not awesome. Like for those listening, this isn't me like bragging about it. I'm Brian. I've talked endlessly about it. It's not awesome, but my point is we're working to fix it. Yeah, we're going to fix it. Yeah. Yeah. Very slowly. But my point, the reason I'm saying this is because even 30 years later, even after I've had some success, I still have that fear. It is hard coded into who I am over time. Hopefully I'll be able to get out of it. But if you're going back to, you know, was greed driving him. Oh, God, no, greed was like a moment of time that happened to exist between minor respites of fear. That's pretty much the, the extent of it. It'd be the equivalent of if, if someone went on a vacation for a week and you're like, oh man, you're always on vacation. No, I was on vacation. It happened for a brief second for a week, the
Ryan Rutan: first time in 10 years. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's the, like, this is such a common problem for founders, right? Regardless. So whether we're talking about a big exit, just any success, anything, right? Is that people don't see or don't remember or choose not to, to take into account all that went into that accomplishment, right? And it's to your point, right? Part of that. Now, you know, we talk about the fact that the watermark moves for founders, right? Like it's constantly, when we achieve a new level of success, it means we have to achieve a higher level of success. But the other thing that's driving that is the, now we've accomplished this and so there is this very real fear that then we lose that thing. Right. And, and everybody else that can even manifest as, as greed to anybody looking from the outside, like, oh, well, now they've, they've made the money now. They're just keeping all of it. Right. Or they're doing this with it. They're not, you know, they're not sharing as much of it with everybody else as they could have. Well, where were you when we created the cap table? Like, uh you don't seem to be part of this conversation or part of any of the work, but uh glad you've got an opinion on the matter. That's fantastic. Welcome to the finish line. But that fear comes in then at that point around, how do I keep this? Right? Because that founder has not forgotten all that went into the creation of that, right? They have not forgotten the, the fear that drove them there and now they've achieved it and now there's this fear that it could somehow ebb and flow away and that's a very well founded fear because that absolutely can happen.
Wil Schroter: Let's talk about the early, early stages of that, right? Because it's easy to talk about the, the end point. We'll talk about that too, you know, when things have gotten huge or whatever, right? But let's talk about the first glimmers of that for, for what you and I would, would experience, which is when the company made just enough money that we could pay ourselves right now. A lot of people, folks that are listening that are founders, this is gonna be second nature, but for a lot of people are thinking about becoming founders. This is something you often don't understand. You assume that when you build your own business that when he comes in, you pay yourself, you pay everybody else and you know, it, it works what it does. It's not really the way it works. It, it should, it sounds cool but it's not really the way it works. It works more like the money comes in, you pay everyone else and then eventually if things someday go, well, you might get paid. Right. And that's just the nature of it. You are, believe it or not last in line, even though you're the first to make that decision. Now with that said, the first glimmer of this is, oh, we have a little extra cash. Can I pay myself or do I put that back in the business? That's where it
Ryan Rutan: starts. And that's the, that's where its massive catch 22. You
Wil Schroter: know, something that's really funny about everything we talk about here is that none of it is new. Everything you're dealing with right now has been done 1000 times before you, which means the answer already exists. You may just not know it. But that's ok. That's kind of what we're here to do. We talk about this stuff on the show, but we actually solve these problems all day long at groups dot start start ups dot com. So, if any of this sounds familiar, stop guessing about what to do, let us just give you the answers to the test and be done with it. And so, so I'm looking at going well, you know, it's, it's an extra $5000 and while that would mean a lot to me as far as being able to pay my bills and do things, I, I wasn't able to do five seconds ago. Business needs more marketing money. The business needs a more another developer. The business, business needs business needs. Right? And so we typically don't do it, but we start to build this behavior. Where come LA parents do the same thing once they have kids, right? You know, they like, hey, what do the kids need? And then all the whatever is left over is what I get. Yeah, exactly. And so I think we start to build this behavior early so much so that it becomes a muscle that we kind of forget about. Right. Like I'll give an example, people who raise money, your venture funded founders, right? Typical story. I'm seven years in eight years in, I've raised money, you know, so the company is theoretically had capital but it was never really enough to pay me well. And I don't mean like getting crazy money but like way less than I was ever making before. Not to mention the first few years I wasn't making anything. So like when you combine that out, average that out. Yeah. Yeah, man. Like maybe in year seven or eight, I'm at like 90 or $100,000 which for certain folks won't, won't, will sound like a lot of money, but for somebody who may have come off like a $200,000 your job. Right. That's a huge step backward for a very long time. Yeah. Well,
Ryan Rutan: yeah, I mean, because you're also in a lot of cases, you're accumulating debt during that period, which by the way accrues interest. So it's not even just what the deficit was at the time you, you incurred that it grows, right? So you're paying that back over time on, you know, what is now a a very mediocre salary? And again, like this is, this is a few of founders, right? Because we're not talking about something that and actually managed to get venture funding, which is a tiny minority of everybody out there starting companies. Correct.
Wil Schroter: Correct. So what I think is interesting is, is we, we first wade into these moments of greed, so to speak where there's like literally anything on the table to even talk about and contemplating, you know, whether we deserve some of it. And it's a tough conversation. I again, I'm, I'm not here to, to, to make it small, but the point I wanna make is we're trying to get to a point where we can even have the option to be greedy. Right? Greed implies abundance. Greed implies that there's more than, than, than someone needs and, and by virtue of that they take more than they deserve. Sure. That
Ryan Rutan: sounds like most start up. I know abundance more than we need so much. Abundance, ample resources. Right.
Wil Schroter: Yeah. Yeah. What I want to say and I want to quote my favorite movie of all time. Wall Street. Greed for lack of a better word. I thought it was gonna be zoolander. Yeah. Second. Right. Who am I? No. But when I say that I don't mean greed in the way that people think about it like this, you know, evil, like, you know, whatever greed implies, like the luxury of greed for a founder implies that you made it far long enough to have any abundance. Right. Here's what greed looks like for a founder making payroll, right? I wanna have enough abundance that I can make payroll. Right. Again, people take it to being something totally different. They're thinking private jets and mansions, right? Dude, most people will never get to that point. I get anxious when, when a founder talk being greedy over paying themselves anything,
Ryan Rutan: anything. Yeah. Yeah. Should I do this now? Right. Because there's that there's that constant calculus around if I pay myself now. Am I going to forego a larger payout later or the stability of the company or even the existence of the company, right. So there's all of these again, again, that's, that's back to fear based, right? It has nothing to do with greed, but we're back to fear at this point, a fear that we will make a decision that will somehow completely negatively impact the company and therefore our own personal outcomes as well. But if that's generally not worth thinking about, we're not thinking if I take a little money off the table, now, I might torpedo this thing. You're not thinking and then I won't have this mediocre salary in three months. And that's not what you're motivated by. You're thinking about the fact that the team is not going to get paid, right. Your clients are gonna get served. All of that stuff is what's on top of that decision matrix. And again, because you're afraid that you won't be able to pull off what you set out to do if you start to do anything good for you. Right. So we're always last in line.
Wil Schroter: Absolutely. And, and with that, you've got this nonstop feeling that, like, it's your point, maybe I'm preventing growth or other side of it, which maybe this is my last good month, you know, maybe we just had our best quarter and we don't know it. Right. And, and we're about to go into a dead zone. Right. How
Ryan Rutan: many times have we done this? Right. Like, how many times did you sit there looking at it going is this a blip or a trend like, you know what, maybe I'll just wait, I'll give it a quarter and then I'll raise my salary or I'll start my salary and then you get to the end of the quarter and you're like, well, the first month in the quarter was really strong. The second one was ok and the third one was kind of ok again. So which, and then you just, you just keep hunting this decision downfield over and over and over again. Never get into that magical moment where you're like, ok, now all of the lights on the, should I pay myself? Board have turned green? So I guess I'll do it right. There's no such thing,
Wil Schroter: right? And, and look like when a founder has a big exit or something like that, you know, people like, oh my God, you know, they made so much money. Cool. And I get that how most founders again. And I, I really want to quantify this, most founders, like 99% of them are never gonna get to that point. Right. So the idea that they were all driven by greed is just bullshit. Right? It also again, I just want to reiterate this point. We should all be striving to have the luxury of greed, right? And again, I'm using greed to mean abundance that we have enough out there that there's something even to divide up. Right. Again, kind of hard to be greedy when nothing in the bank that said they're hopefully knock on wood for all of our listeners. There will be a point, right where they can be greedy, right? Where they can sit, take something off the table. And that could be their first paycheck. That could be their first paycheck, right? Could be their first distribution. It could be something, you know, uh as an outcome of a sale, et cetera, which is, which is statistically a really low probability. So that's why I'm using all of these to point this out. If at no point in that spectrum, do we ever feel like we're deserving to be greedy, greedy being constrained? If you will, we have to ask ourselves, what were we doing this for? If it wasn't to get paid or you get a salary, right? Or something like the basic like that, why are we doing this? And I've gone through it? So like I'm the worst at this. So this isn't me criticizing
Ryan Rutan: anybody? No, I look, it's you, you, you don't have to go far to find this, right? Ask any founder, right? This is one of my favorite questions to ask is like, what are you hoping to get out of this? Right? I ask it just like that invariably the answer that comes back as well. I want to and Right, and it has nothing to do with them. All of the feedback they give me has to do with like how they want the company to grow, how they want to add a feature, how they want it to be more effective in solving the problem, how they really care about this one particular client they're trying to drive an outcome for and then I'll, I'll just let him go for a minute and I'll say no, no. I mean, I mean, like you personally, what do you wanna get out of it? Right. Like, do you want, you know, this amount of money? Do you want this? And they just like, they're like, oh, oh well, well, well, well, shit, I've, I've been standing at the end of the receiving line for so long and I'm not used to getting anything that I've kind of forgotten. Like some of them are just like they're like, well, you know, it's funny that's changed over time, right? When I started out, I thought this is what I wanted. Now I'm realizing that this is what maybe what I can actually get. But even that I'm like, you know, I don't know if I really like it just, it's ok. Right. It's ok. But again, this is like that, that feeling where they're like they're afraid to be greedy. Right? So again, by fear and greed being our main motivators here were the question of the day and they just get stuck in this trap of not feeling like they deserve it. And I think that's, that's one of the worst feelings for me is to see a founder who's still not even yet. At the point, I get your point there, which is that it takes a long time to even get to the point where there is enough abundance to be greedy, even when we're before that. And they're just looking at themselves in the future, they're afraid to feel greedy about an outcome. It's highly unlikely to even happen. Like, what the hell is this? Why are we torturing ourselves
Wil Schroter: like this? I gotta tell you that there's a, I love this point. You brought up about people feeling good about kind of what they burned, right? Every now and again at start ups dot com. When somebody has a particularly good month, you know, a person that's on commission or something like that, I always reach out to him and I said I wanna be clear. You earned every penny of this, right? Because no one ever says that for sure among every founder that I talk to whenever they have an exit or an event or whatever and they, they buy something like you typically a house or a car or something like that. I said, I want to be clear because probably no one else will tell you this. You have earned every square inch of that house or every bolt on that car, right? Like you have earned that right? And don't let anybody ever take it away from you. And every time I say that Ryan, they're like, huh? No one said that to me
Ryan Rutan: though when he said that. Yeah. No, but it isn't
Wil Schroter: that bizarre. So, let me give you some, some counterexamples, some examples that I think some of our audience can kind of take and use themselves right in all the time that we've been running start ups dot com. Over 11 years we have hundreds of people here now, but over the years with people coming in and out, let's say five or 600 people in that time, not a single person has ever come to us and said, you know, guys, you're kind of overpay me, right? You know, like I need to kind of give a little bit of it back, right? In other words, all the people around you never stopped and said, you know, this is probably too much. Nobody else felt
Ryan Rutan: greedy, nobody else felt greedy. Ever, right? The opposite
Wil Schroter: generally. But, right? But, but Ryan, you and I in, in, in Elliott and, and Steve and stuff, we all work. Look at our P and L, right? And we're like, dude, like we have to make this work. The difference is we see a consequence to overreaching, right? If, if you and I pay ourselves too much, we could lose other people, right? There's an actual consequence. The rest of the org doesn't think like that, right? Nor should they, by the way, I'm not saying they should be burdened by it. But what I'm saying is, it's an interesting contradiction when you look at all the people around you that have no problem. Right. You know, take it on cash, whatever as they shouldn't, by the way, they've earned it. That's sort of my point. Right. But the founders or the people that have consequence in the business often feel so differently about it. Right. Again, you and I think about this all the time, we're like, hey, if we make this bet and it doesn't work, there's consequence, there's a real cost to that. Yeah, you bet. We're not just like, oh let's take every like, like every penny and just pay ourselves, put it all in red. Yeah, exactly. Right. We have to make it work. And by way of that, we have a consequence to our actions. However, you would think with that consequence when you and I do well, that we'd also feel great about just taking all the extra cash. And that is never the case
Ryan Rutan: because then because then you've got more cash to risk, right? Bigger, bigger, bigger problems like it never ends. I
Wil Schroter: think there's a real paradox for founders around the idea of not feeling like they deserve to be greedy because again, gr you know, and greed is bad is in, in that context, right? And what I'd say is look, do what you will with your abundance, right? I'm not here to preach you how you use yours, et cetera. But remember that it's also your abundance to do something with, right? You and I look at a good month and we say, hey, we get to choose what we're gonna do with this money, right? We've earned that right now. If we choose to, to take it all. I know it's a great idea, but we choose to take it all. We choose to take it all right. But I'll say this, I'll, this even knowing this, even being aware of this, I still feel very little greed. Like, for me, like, taking more money only drives fear in me. Taking more money is like, oh shit, like, like what if I took it at the wrong time or, or you know, what if it could have gone here? What if, what if, what if this could have
Ryan Rutan: compounded into something else? Right. This could have been, right. It's, it's like, you know, it's, you bought a stock or something, right? Let's just use something that's, that's really easy to understand in liquid and it starts to go up and you're like, ok, well, I've made some money but is it going to keep going up? Should I sell it now? Consequence?
Wil Schroter: Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. A
Ryan Rutan: 100% of fear and greed cycle, right. You're like, well, I, I'm afraid I'll lose it, but I'd like a little more. Right. So that we understand the number of times that, that scenario that, that you laid out actually exists within a life is so small. Like for every time we do have that choice to take something is so far outweighed by every time where we looked at it and went, there's nothing here to take. We just have to keep going. We have to keep working. We gotta keep trying. So I think that again, like even if you were to say in one of those moments, like yes, this is gonna be the time I take it. You've probably said no, 20 times for everyone that you said yes or 100 times for everyone that you said yes. And so and yet we still can't let it go, can't we, we can't just be like, yeah, I feel good about that. I feel good about taking money off the table. Funny because we do tell people this all the time. You should feel good about this. You should feel good about paying yourself and then I turn around, we go to run payroll and you're like, man, should I should, I should I Yeah.
Wil Schroter: Right. Right. I think that one of the tricky things about this is we, we are in a business where we are essentially driven by fear. Right? And, and that is what it is. We're building something that's never been built before in a market that's never existed with a team that's never worked together before. There is nothing in, in any of this equation that spells confidence and assurance. Yeah. Total uncertainty. Right. So, of course, that's gonna be driven by fear. Right? Of course, that's being driven by fear. Kind of hard to be fully uncertain and greedy at the same time. Right. With that said, there isn't a part of us in most cases that will ever have the luxury of greed. And if we do, if we, if we have that, that moment, that sliver that one opportunity, maybe it's our first paycheck, right? Maybe it's our last paycheck where we've cashed out or something like that, take it, take it and enjoy it. Be greedy as
Ryan Rutan: hell. If you find yourself in that position where you can be the evil villain who's saying it's all mine, it's all mine. You're also not wrong, right? It is, you created it right? In the same sense that you created the failure. You got to keep all of that. You created the debt, you got to keep all of that win. And if you do win it is yours, right? You, you did that. I
Wil Schroter: hope that and I know you do too that everyone listening has an opportunity to be greedy. I hope that the goal, goal is greed, right? I hope that the goal is in abundance. I hope that the goal is that you've built something within this start up, you've created something that creates enough abundance. So you can choose to have greed and get out of the fear cycle for a minute. Don't be like me, right? And maybe not like Ryan, right? Probably like Ryan. But in this case, what I wanna focus on is at that moment when it's your your shot, take it, take it when it's your first paycheck, take it when it's your last paycheck. But all that matters is when you have the opportunity, take it. So in addition to all the stuff related to founder groups, you've also got full access to everything on start ups dot com. That includes all of our education tracks which will be funding customer acquisition, even how to manage your monthly finances. They're so, so much stuff in there. All of our software including BIZ plan for putting together detailed business plans and financials launch rock for attracting early customers and of course, fundable for attracting investment capital. When you log into the start ups dot com site, you'll find all of these resources available.