Steven

One of my favorite videos of all time is where Steve Jobs, who you just mentioned, talks about hiring truly exceptional people. And he says words to the effect, I'll play it on screen. He says, people think the success of Apple is a consequence of me and my talent and my skills.

But what I've actually done is I've built my career, quote, on hiring truly exceptional people, doing the extremely hard work of finding them and hiring them. And this crazy thing happens when you do that is it propagates. i.e. A players then want to work with A players. They also hire A players and it spreads. I think it was this video.

But what I've actually done is I've built my career, quote, on hiring truly exceptional people, doing the extremely hard work of finding them and hiring them. And this crazy thing happens when you do that is it propagates. i.e. A players then want to work with A players. They also hire A players and it spreads. I think it was this video.

It's so interesting to see your journey through that and how you ended up at skill acquisition because as you went through, there was three things that I was thinking about and I managed to write them down. The first at the top of it was you detailed three reasons why hiring the exceptional person when you're faced with that paradox of what do I do with my profits? It makes so much sense.

It's so interesting to see your journey through that and how you ended up at skill acquisition because as you went through, there was three things that I was thinking about and I managed to write them down. The first at the top of it was you detailed three reasons why hiring the exceptional person when you're faced with that paradox of what do I do with my profits? It makes so much sense.

One of the big things I hear from founders that they don't appreciate is... To go for a long period of time, you have to have some kind of emotional regulation. And as you were talking about the different levels of business and every level you have more problems, what I often see is a young founder hasn't hired those levels in between to deal with all those different types of problems.

One of the big things I hear from founders that they don't appreciate is... To go for a long period of time, you have to have some kind of emotional regulation. And as you were talking about the different levels of business and every level you have more problems, what I often see is a young founder hasn't hired those levels in between to deal with all those different types of problems.

And they are like burning out and thinking of quitting. I had someone in my office last week and she's on the route to build about a $50 million business this year. And the first question I said to her was, what's your executive team? And she just like rolls her eyes and she's like, I don't have an executive team.

And they are like burning out and thinking of quitting. I had someone in my office last week and she's on the route to build about a $50 million business this year. And the first question I said to her was, what's your executive team? And she just like rolls her eyes and she's like, I don't have an executive team.

She'd done a post on social media, basically in tears saying that she was going to quit. She's got a $30 to $50 million business. It's growing like wildfire, but she's about to almost quit it because she's dealing with every single problem.

She'd done a post on social media, basically in tears saying that she was going to quit. She's got a $30 to $50 million business. It's growing like wildfire, but she's about to almost quit it because she's dealing with every single problem.

And often founders say to me, they think because they're experiencing so much hardship in that like one to three million phase, that forever it's going to be just huge pain. And I talked to them about this thing I call the promised land. Do I love this? Because in the first two, three years of my business, I thought that forever I'm going to have to deal with every fucking problem.

And often founders say to me, they think because they're experiencing so much hardship in that like one to three million phase, that forever it's going to be just huge pain. And I talked to them about this thing I call the promised land. Do I love this? Because in the first two, three years of my business, I thought that forever I'm going to have to deal with every fucking problem.

Jenny in the office is pissed off at Dave. And on Saturday night when they were drunk, they did something which they shouldn't have had. And I realized the problem was I hadn't solved for hiring these levels. So everything was coming to me. And the emotional toll on my nervous system of dealing with every problem was not sustainable. And then I accidentally hired someone good.

Jenny in the office is pissed off at Dave. And on Saturday night when they were drunk, they did something which they shouldn't have had. And I realized the problem was I hadn't solved for hiring these levels. So everything was coming to me. And the emotional toll on my nervous system of dealing with every problem was not sustainable. And then I accidentally hired someone good.

Katie, who I mentioned. And then she dealt with all this. Yeah, she dealt with all this shit. And then I can think again as a founder. So I wanted to just give a moment to that and your thoughts on that.

Katie, who I mentioned. And then she dealt with all this. Yeah, she dealt with all this shit. And then I can think again as a founder. So I wanted to just give a moment to that and your thoughts on that.

The other really interesting thing, as you were talking about your friend who was doing blogs and missed YouTube, was the idea that our success traps, being an old innovator's dilemma, that success traps us in the past. So your friend probably missed YouTube because he didn't want to reallocate headcount to something that was working and paying the bills.

The other really interesting thing, as you were talking about your friend who was doing blogs and missed YouTube, was the idea that our success traps, being an old innovator's dilemma, that success traps us in the past. So your friend probably missed YouTube because he didn't want to reallocate headcount to something that was working and paying the bills.

And this, I guess, ties into your point about failure being so unbelievably important because what me and you both do right now is going to get old. And we probably both watched the people that came before us fade into irrelevance.