Kyle Scheele

And then some of that's just a psychological thing.

If I tell somebody an idea before it's launched, that person thinks, okay, they want feedback.

It's still malleable, whatever.

And so they kind of beat it up a lot.

If it's already launched, then they just go, oh man, that's cool.

Great job.

And all the same criticisms might be in their head, but they're not going to say them.

And so I think it is about figuring out what am I looking for here?

What does this idea need right now?

This idea probably needs a bodyguard.

And if that person isn't going to be it, then I need to find somebody who will.

And I need to not expose this thing to that right now in the same way that, hey, if I've got an immunocompromised kid and there's a play date at a preschool, I'm probably not going to take them because they're going to get sick.

So I'm not going to take my idea to a place where it's probably going to get killed until it's ready to go into the arena.

Last thing that every idea needs is a crew.

There's this myth in the American psyche of the self-made man or the self-made woman.

And it's just, there's no such thing as that.

Nobody is self-made because all of us are a product of, yes, our hard work, the risks that we took and the sacrifices we made.

Absolutely, that's a part of it.

But there is another key ingredient, which is all of the other people who supported us along the way, all of the systems that existed, all of the resources, all of the luck, all of that comes together.

The problem is that stuff doesn't sell books.