well is there something wrong with with
generating money it's like
well it depends on what you're going to
do with the money
you know like if you're going to spend
it all on hookers and cocaine
then probably that's reprehensible
well thanks a lot jordan for coming and
doing the interview yeah
um no problem it's funny i'd planned all
these questions
and then we've just had a chat before
rolling about um
you know your interest in
entrepreneurship
and maybe that could be the angle we
could use on the podcast because maybe
it's not
what you've talked about on a lot of
other podcasts so i might just shut the
laptop and we might go down there if
that's all right with you
yeah um so yeah how
does psychology temperament uh
marry up and link with psychology you're
obviously well known for psychology
commentary in other areas but maybe we
could focus a bit on
that domain well i mean
there's lots known about what predicts
success in different domains
across the lifespan let's say the first
question is
what are the if you're trying to analyze
something like business success
um or productive success what
what are the proper domains of category
and so if you're trying to categorize
jobs for example which turns out to be
quite difficult
the simplest conceptual scheme that's
practical that gets you somewhere is
like a two by two matrix
they're simple jobs and complex jobs
that's the first thing that's worth
knowing it's a continuum really
but a simple job is one where
once you're trained you just repeat what
you're doing so so
factory line work would be would be an
example of that
or or checking out people at a grocery
store restocking grocery shelves
or or jobs like that the best predictors
for success in those jobs is
conscientiousness trait
conscientiousness and conscientious
people are orderly and
industrious and we don't exactly know
why they are
it seems like it's associated oddly
enough with such things as disgust
sensitivity so maybe people are
conscientious because
they get disgusted with themselves if
they're not useful and guilty
you know they get guilty if they're not
engaging in productive enterprise and
maybe that's a marker for for a kind of
complex
social responsibility yeah you know but
um which sounds like the complete
opposite of
most entrepreneurs i know well the or
that's that's the thing the
entrepreneurs are different so so for
simple jobs
iq intelligence predicts how fast you
learn the job but not how well you do it
once you learn it
and what predicts there is
conscientiousness so
you basically if you're hiring people
you want conscientious people who are
that's the most important thing and then
the second most important thing is you
want people who are
relatively low in trait neuroticism
which is a negative emotion dimension
because they're less likely to be
absentee right and so forth so
in complex jobs complex job is one where
the demands
change on a regular basis and so most
managerial administrative positions are
complex jobs because
you can't learn the job once and for all
and then the best predictor for complex
jobs the first predictor is iq
and the second predictor is
conscientiousness and iq is about three
times more powerful than
than conscientiousness as a predictor
and then
so that's the first simple versus
complex and then the second would be the
second category scheme would be
something like managerial slash
administrative
versus entrepreneurial and the
entrepreneurial types actually they're
over with the artists
so the best predictor for
entrepreneurial success first is iq
but second is trade openness which is
the creativity dimension so
entrepreneurial types tend to be very
high in trade openness
and so that sets them with the artists
and also with the political liberals
because the best predictor of political
liberalism
is trade openness right so the managers
and administrative types they tend to be
conservative
and the entrepreneurial and creative
types tend to be liberal
and so if you're an entrepreneur you're
going to
be a lateral thinker and so you'll be
the sort of person
if they hear an idea if you hear an idea
that will
trigger off a whole bunch of other ideas
and you'll be motivated primarily by
interest in pursuing your ideas
but your p your downfall is likely to be
organizational administrative ability so
it's often useful for entrepreneurial
types to
pair themselves with managerial and
administrative types yeah
you are described it's like you are
describing my soul here
yeah well there's there's a tension
there's this weird tension between
doing one thing right which is what you
need to do if you're
if you've already decided what it is
that you're doing and
scanning the landscape for something new
to do that would be worthwhile those
aren't the same enterprises
and so most companies are an uneasy
marriage of entrepreneurial and
managerial types
as the company gets more and more
established the managerial
administrative types tend to dominate
but then that becomes problematic
because it means it's more and more
difficult for the company to
shift laterally when it has to which is
again i think why
so many companies eventually fail
because they lose the
creative head is that what you mean sure
they lose the flexibility yeah and it's
it's funny because
they're trying to maximize their ability
to implement
but it's very difficult to do that
without
also simultaneously bearing the cost of
narrowing
right so the thing is is if if you know
what you're doing
you want to hire a conservative if you
don't know what you're doing you want to
hire a liberal
right right so that's that's a way of
thinking about it temperamentally
it's also a way of parsing out the
political landscape
to understand at least in part why you
need conservatives and liberals
yeah so well i mean i find a business is
like a family
and in the past in my company i've had
all under 25 year old male
entrepreneurs why did we hire them
because that's what we were like
right and people i've found
entrepreneurs tend to hire
versions of themselves at first instead
of being more self-aware to go actually
i'm chaotic disruptive what i need is
order
yeah and um like you said good
administrative
skills conscientiousness so you go
through that chaos
of hiring people too much like you and
having like too much male energy or too
much creative energy
then you maybe react and hire a lot of
administration and conscientiousness and
then you maybe lose the soul in your
company
yeah and then the creator is trying to
drag the company forward feels like he's
been getting held back by everybody
and it is yes but the funny thing is
it's needed to hold him back but they've
got to let him go as well
well that's the that's that's that's the
problem the fundamental problem is
most new ideas are stupid dangerous and
counterproductive
and they're the ones that change the
world well well well they are sometimes
they are sometimes but
there's a subset of new ideas that even
though
new ideas are dangerous and disruptive
and often counterproductive and
generally don't result in a productive
company
some of them are absolutely necessary
and they're the thing you need to do
next
and so and and that's a very difficult
problem to solve
because it's the sa it's the it's the
fundamental problem of innovation
it's like most innovations aren't
justified or warranted but some of them
are absolutely crucial
so how do you distinguish between them
and the answer is well we we don't know
the part of the way that you do that in
a dynamic economy
is you let and encourage
a whole host of entrepreneurs to produce
their ideas
and you let almost all of them fail
which is kind of painful for the
entrepreneurs
but limited company and all those kind
of structures are set up to make that
more safe
right right yeah well those are those
are this is something that's
massively underappreciated on the
liberal
left end of the political spectrum is
people just don't understand
how absolutely revolutionary the idea of
a limited company is because what a
limited company
allows is a limited company allows your
idea to die
instead of you and that's a big deal
otherwise no one would take the risk
would they have created well
that's right no no one could bear the
risk because if you failed you it would
wipe you out permanently it's like well
who the hell's going to take that risk
and so the fact that the limited
liability is one of the
the unbelievable tech i can't believe
that we know it's like an innovation
that we all just forget about jesus
yeah it's it and it's such a merciful
innovation yeah it's like
you mean i i get to fail and no one's
gonna kill me
it's it's it's no one's going to throw
me in debtors prison it's not going to
hang around my neck
for the rest of my life i can actually
take a risk
so because the other thing you see often
with entrepreneurs is that
they fail a lot before they succeed and
so i mean
you have to be pretty damn spectacularly
lucky
to have your first idea when you don't
know what the hell you're doing
be a spectacular success or maybe it's a
good idea but you weren't ready
and you're more ready for the
marketplace isn't ready or i mean
that's the other thing that people don't
really understand is because if you're a
naive entrepreneur you think
well all i have to do is make a great
product it's like no that's about five
percent of it
you know and and that shocked the hell
out of me when i started building
software for example because we assumed
that
we we developed software to help people
um select
better employees and we never could sell
it except
in very rare circumstances but we
assumed that if we had a product that
was validated we could show that it had
the effects that we wanted
and that it was more efficient than
other products in the marketplace that
selling it would be easy it's like well
that's just
so wrong selling and marketing things is
impossible i love it when people say oh
the product just sells itself it's just
one of those things which are like
you've not been in business a very long
time um yeah because you've got market
forces you've got your skill set you
could have a great product
you're just not ready to sell it because
you haven't got enough experience one
you don't know how to price it yeah and
you don't know who to talk to to sell it
you know you can spend your whole life
especially if you're selling to
companies which is virtually impossible
talking to the wrong people and it feels
like work and it really is work but you
never end up contacting a real decision
maker
and then you can't tolerate the
excessive delay
like you think well i'm going to go sell
this product to a big company
because because they can obviously
provide me with a massive contract it's
like yeah but
there's a relationship between the size
of the company and the
delay in the implementation and the
delay can be years
and then what this is this happened to
us all the time it was very painful
um we'd get right to the point of
signing with a large company
and there'd be an internal management
transformation and the person that we
were dealing with would disappear
it's like oh no it's like now what we
actually had that happened with a really
big company in new york we were right on
the verge of signing
a contract for use of this
self-authoring program that we designed
which helps people plan their lives
and the the week that we were ready to
sign the contract the ceo
resigned gone two was probably
a year of sales and marketing work just
evaporate yeah you know and and and you
don't get paid for any of that you get
you get no reward for getting 364 days
365 days
you certainly don't well and it's also
really easy for
um one of the things that tech
incubators do really
badly i think is they do lots of things
really badly generally speaking
but one of the things they do that's
very counterproductive with
the people that they train is they they
emphasize the development of the company
but they don't
force their entrepreneurs to find
customers
because your first customer is the most
difficult thing you'll ever do as a
business person
in in my experience to find someone who
will actually
pay you that first time that isn't your
mom yeah that's right well that's right
that isn't a family member that's an
actual customer
and the the other problem that people
face when they're trying
to sell a new product is one of the
reasons
one of the ways that people decide
whether they're going to buy something
is whether or not
a they know anyone else who's already
bought it or b
if there's other people in their domain
that are already using it
and if if your sales pitch is well no
this is new and revolutionary you think
well that's a wonderful sales pitch
it's like it is if you're talking to
someone who's
entrepreneurial and risk-taking and
inter and interested in revolutionary
ideas
but if you're talking to a middle
manager in a company
the last thing that person wants to hear
is well you could be a risk taker and
introduce this into your company the
person's thinking
i don't want to put my job or reputation
on the line for your product even if it
is revolutionary
in part because if it succeeds i
probably won't be rewarded for its
success
so when we were selling our our employee
selection software for example
we ran into we were academics or and so
you know there was lots of things we
didn't know about business
and one of the things we ran into which
was so funny
we talked to the people who were doing
the hiring and they had a certain budget
which was usually lower than because
they had virtually no budget for hiring
weirdly enough so what we were charging
for the product which was still
extremely modest
exceeded their budget he said well look
you're going to make a
250 fold return on this that's that's
the pessimistically it's 50.
realistically it's 250 and
the upper end was more like 500. so it's
a no-brainer to implement this
it's like well we're budgeted on the
cost side what do you mean
well if we if we hire more productive
employees we won't be rewarded for that
we'll just be punished for spending more
money on the old set i thought
well we can't even talk to you because
i'm trying to sell you something that
will benefit
your company but for you as the decision
maker there's nothing but risk in
implementing the new process
yes that just blew me away it's like oh
i see
the hiring budget and the productivity
budget aren't associated
so that's like a fatal impediment to to
our sales process
so that was well we learned lots of
things about
about and i came out of the whole
enterprise
with way more respect for people
especially for people who do sales
jesus that's such a brutal job yeah and
you know when people are
they have a what it's easy for people to
it's even a popular trope to be somewhat
contemptuous of salespeople you know all
those salespeople definitely in britain
we're very reserved when it comes to
selling in britain
but yeah but i mean i don't put ads on
my podcast i mean there's ads on
virtually every american podcast yeah i
don't put ads i don't need
the revenue so i in a way there's the
old creative artist side of me that
doesn't want to interrupt my work with
ads
but like if i started putting ads on my
podcast you know some people would be
okay with it there'd be a bit of a riot
yeah well and i think i think that's a
real mistake because
it it's no we're not giving the devil
his due
it's really really hard to be a good
salesperson
and people like that are unbelievably
rare and they're unbelievably valuable
and nothing wrong with
it and it doesn't make you a bad person
and you're not selling your soul
well it's also it's also how how are you
going to generate revenue
and without that economy money even
going to move in an economy
well the other thing that happens with
the artistic and maybe the
entrepreneurial types too is that they
they end up with contempt for the
business end of the process and that's a
real mistake you know
i mean one of the things that i tell
people who are artistically oriented
let's say so they're in the
entrepreneurial category is
look um it's virtually impossible for
you to monetize your product that's the
first thing you have to understand
so maybe you'll get lucky and you'll
figure out a
strategy but if you add contempt
for the sales and marketing process to
that impossibility
you can be bloody well sure that all
you're going to do is starve
so so you better drop your contempt for
the sales and marketing end of this if
you
if you want to sustain yourself through
your life and that's going to be a
prerequisite for your creative
endeavor yeah and so and art schools and
and and establishments like that do an
absolutely
dreadful job of well they don't teach it
i was an artist
i was an artist i went through art
school yeah they don't teach it no
never once no i know i know and it's
it's and i mean how are you going to
commercialize your venture how are you
going to pay for your mortgage
what just how are you going to buy food
yeah with a just a paint brush and a
camera oh jesus and
and well an artists are in particularly
dire position because
as a visual artist for example you're
not only competing with all the visual
artists
that now exist and there's plenty of
them but you're also competing with all
the dead artists who were way
who already have an established
reputation and a body of work that's
that's being what still being exchanged
in the marketplace
and so you don't want to add contempt
for the sales and marketing process to
that
and you also probably have to understand
that if you want to be an artist
that you're also going to have to have
have to
have another job yeah because it's just
unless you want to bang your head
against the wall until it's bleeding
it's so hard and i mean i've known some
people who are outstanding artists and
i've known very very few
i don't know if i've ever met anyone who
was able to
make a living from the outset of their
career
as a as a non-commercial visual artist
brutally difficult so and and adding
contempt to that is not helpful
you should be very thankful that sales
and marketing
people exist even i know there's that
what would you call it the mercantilist
commercial element to it that
is sort of in some sense you can
consider it distasteful from the
perspective of higher aesthetics but
don't confuse your ignorance of
something important
sales and marketing with your moral
purity that's a big mistake it's a big
ethical mistake and you will pay for
that
yeah so so i think there's some simple
solutions i almost like want to sort of
summarize this part so far
i've always enjoyed selling straight to
consumer yeah and not to businesses yeah
i like that better too i think that
you've got more customers you're always
at the decision maker sometimes
it's the husband or the wife who owns
the credit card streams but other than
that you're always at the decision maker
you learn very intuitively and quickly
you get a quick feedback loop
whereas like you said if you're dealing
with a manager's got their own motives
and then the company has got different
motives they're not going to tell you
the truth you've got to unwrap
they don't even know what the truth is
necessarily because they can't represent
their business because they do
well they don't embody it yeah so
straight to consumer is number one
i think the second thing is i think
probably it is fair to say that sales
and marketing can be learned
but i think it's also fair to say that
sales and marketing are
more likely to succeed in certain
personality traits well you need to be
extroverted
sure yeah so you and and assertive yeah
and it also helps to be emotionally
stable because
what's your failure rate as a sales
person oh it's like 50 to one pick
yeah it's unbelievable it's like you
have to you have to have a constitution
of bloody iron to tolerate that
you know because the what's the default
answer to
do you want to buy something from me no
no it's no
go away right it's worse than no yeah
it's like no
and you're bothering me yeah and then
even if
the best you get is well
that's worse that's worse than no i
think about it the middle grounds
yeah well at least with the no you
cannot move on that's right you drown in
that's right well that's the problem
with trying to sell to big companies
yeah it's like it's never enough maybe
maybe we'll do this
it's like win well maybe in the next six
months to a year which will be delayed
absolutely 100 yeah we've found selling
direct to consumer way less
way less uh stressful yeah and
and you know what the funny thing is
more rewarding sorry to jump into more
rewarding more rewarding because you can
actually change an individual's life
yes yes with a good product yes exactly
yeah well the thing about
you know you kind of have this idea that
you could you could let's go for a big
company
a couple of contracts and we're set it's
like yeah but you'll die
in the interim waiting for the contracts
yeah so and
it is so interesting to think about that
in terms of
the the error of marxist criticisms of
capitalism because the marxist criticism
was something like
capital will accrue in the hands of a
smaller and smaller number of
individuals
which it does but the individuals rotate
that's the thing that marks got wrong
now with big companies you think that
well the big companies absorb all the
capital but the thing is they fail
yeah the reason they fail is because
they get so large they're so ponderous
that they
they move so slowly that eventually they
make themselves extinct and
you experience that when you're trying
to sell to them it's like oh you have
this rule
oh you have this rule or you also have
this rule oh this rule means we have to
completely
rewrite our software yeah you know and
then then then
well and and these special adaptations
have to be made
then there's 20 people to clear that
with yeah yeah it's
it's brutally difficult right so this
marxist capitalism thing that was one of
the initial
um things i wanted to talk about i want
to come to that in a minute yep
i'm i'm bursting now with questions and
i know you've got to go at 12. so
okay so the next summary then is
something that worked for me and my
business partner
because you know we're i don't like the
word self-made because i don't think
anyone's self-made i think you need
people around you but
self-made in the sense that we weren't
given money to start we didn't have
family money
oh yeah that's hard and i think the gift
in the business we've grown is
i have a business partner who's very
conscientious very analytical very
skeptical
his answer is always enough right right
i have a partner like that
right and then so and i'm the opposite
and so that
allowed me to go and do the sales and
the marketing and allowed him to
clear up my mess yeah accounts finance
structure organization yeah
so to anyone listening who isn't really
a natural sales or marketing person or
doesn't want to learn it
partner or align with someone well who
is well and you may probably make a
great team
well and it's also on it's also really
important to understand that these
things they can be learned to some
degree but
there are temperamental proclivities and
so
if you're if you're open technically
that's a big five trait
you can your people who are listening i
have a website
understandmyself.com
understandmyself.com
and if you want to know your big five
profile
it will provide that and it breaks each
of the big five into the two sub
components and so
it's very useful so that you can go
there and find out what temperamental
pattern you have if you're high in
openness then you're oriented towards
entrepreneurial activity if you're high
in conscientiousness then you're
oriented towards
managerial activity if you're high in
agreeableness customer service
disagreeable people well disagree people
are good for
they're also good for managerial
positions if they're not too
disagreeable
if you're extroverted that tilts you
towards sales
these things are and so if you're going
to hire someone for the job you should
first of all understand that every
person isn't for every job and you might
as well match
the person and the temperament to the
job
and if you know your own temperament
then you can think well i'm an
entrepreneurial type i'm high in con
in openness but low in conscientiousness
it's like well christ you're going to be
an
implementation catastrophe you're not
going to do the paperwork you're not
going to do the follow-up
you're a mess so find someone who's
orderly well i can't work with someone
who's orderly because they'll constrain
me it's like yeah they will
and you need it yeah and so there's that
ten you know there's something
interesting about
how your brain works so if you want to
make a really fine adjustment with your
finger the best way to do it is to push
in one direction
and then push against your finger with
the other finger because then you can
make
unbelievably tiny corrections and so a
system seems to work better this way you
have a right and left hemisphere
if there's dynamic opposition which
because you'd think well
i'd move a lot faster if everything got
the hell out of the way it's like not
necessarily
crash and burn quickly that's exactly it
and so you know you said you partnered
with someone who had traits that opposed
yours
my one of my partners is far more
disagreeable than me
and i would say more orderly and way
more skeptical
and i'm always out there going well we
could do this we could do this we could
do that here's an opportunity here's
another opportunity
and what he does is a lot a lot of it is
yeah a lot of it is no and it's
frustrating of course yeah because we
take it personally well
and because you you see if you're open
you see the landscape of opportunity
but a quick death is better than a slow
painful death
and working with someone who says no
offers you the opportunity
to have a quick death and that's
actually preferable
so you have to tolerate that tension of
opposites if you're going to build
something that's
that's lasting and it's actually
implementable so i think this is vital
to talk about
and i i think generally in the media
the world our opinions i think people
are too extremist everything is good or
bad black or white right or wrong
up or down left or right and to sort of
continue your analogy one of my favorite
bands
is radiohead and they're very big in the
uk
yeah i really like radiohead and if you
study them they've
all got very different musical tastes
and they often have clashes
around the kind of music that they want
to write so the drummer when they were
big with okay computer was like why
can't we write three and a half minute
pop songs that's what's made us massive
and tom york is like the antithesis of
that and as soon as we're
big and well known and number one i want
to do something completely different
you know forget these are my words not
his but you know disruptive and
maybe you know a little bit more
anti-pop
um and then you've got johnny greenwood
who's classically trained
whereas tommy plays the piano completely
unclassically trained if you have a
classically trained pianist they're like
how does tom york play the piano like
that the timing everything it's
it's wrong it's all wrong but that makes
his haunting melodies
um and so i'm convinced that a five
piece with all of those push pull
creative clashes which
they've probably had to learn to drive
forward in like an arrow because they've
probably had loads of falling outs
i believe that is tantamount to them
being the band that they are
and i can say working with business
partners and i have an md and we have i
mean we have about 75 staff
because initially i wanted progressive
to be uh hire everyone like me
and then i wanted to hire everyone the
opposite of them yeah and then it was
all men and then when we were too many
men it's like too much test their own
testosterone same we're all women and
then that brings a different energy
and i'm convinced with families and
companies there needs to be this
balance well these all these different
so that's genuine diversity so that's
the first thing
if you want genuine diversity you go for
diversity of temperament right not
diversity on the basis of ethnicity and
that sort of thing you go for diversity
of temperament
and there wouldn't be from a biological
perspective
all these different temperaments
wouldn't exist if they didn't have their
niches
right so because there'd be no place for
them and the thing is people actually
are
different and they're different because
differences are required in different
circumstances and
it's well another reason to to do the
personality testing i would say is
well first of all it's enlightening i
had my kids do this personality test
that i yeah
told you about um howdy kids they're in
their mid-20s now i had them do it when
they were in their teens
and uh because they you know i tested
out the things i was developing on them
and
and you know i know my kids pretty well
or so i thought and
when they did the personality test it
revealed to me things about them that i
had misconstrued it was really useful so
i thought my daughter was far more
disagreeable than she actually was
a lot of the clashes i was having with
her i was having because at that time
anyway she had pretty high levels of
negative emotion
and i thought that she was disagreeable
she wasn't she's very agreeable but
she so she would get upset quite easily
and so
i learned to some degree to comfort her
when she was upset rather than argue
with her and that was extremely
extraordinarily helpful and i thought my
son was
easy to get along with and he's
unbelievably disagreeable but he's very
very
low in negative emotion yeah so he would
never get upset about anything so he's
easy to be around but trying to get him
to do something he doesn't want to do is
impossible
he just won't do it and so that and
it was quite shocking to me that that
even though i knew my kids and even
though i'm a trained psychologist
i still had elements of their
temperament wrong in my
conceptualization
so that was extremely useful to to
to figure out and and to really develop
an appreciation for the fact that
those people who don't think like you
they're actually different than you
and me better than you well that's the
thing
is that you know with with those
differences come
well your temperament is a set of
strengths
and their attendant weaknesses right and
you don't get the strengths without the
weakness
so the thing about open people is like
well they're creative but they're all
over the place
and if you're open and high in negative
emotion
it's a it's a rough combination because
the openness
destabilizes you right you don't have a
stable identity because you're
interested in this and then you're
interested in this and then you're
interested in that and
and maybe you can handle that but if
you're also an anxious person
and have some difficulty with
uncertainty you basically undo
yourself by being creative it's like
well how can you
how can you stop being anxious if you're
never in the same place for more than
one minute yeah
and so lots of people who are really
creative and high in neuroticism they
just unglue themselves
and so for people like that i recommend
it's like try to make a damn
schedule yeah like try to hem yourself
in a bit because you'll just burn
yourself
out with nervous exhaustion otherwise
yeah so and it's useful to know all of
that
i think we're trying to balance these
paradoxes and ironies
um because the paradox there is someone
the person who
least wants a diary and a structure
probably needs it the most right
well i didn't have some advice about
that okay so let's say that you're
the person that that that procrastinates
and you don't get things done maybe
you're creative
you have other things going for you i
would say well learn to use a schedule
anything i don't want to be hemmed in by
a damn schedule and it feels like a
prison and
fair enough man it is a form of prison
but
that's a form of order well this this is
this and it's also a precondition for
successful additional successful
creative endeavors
so one of the things i recommend for
people to do
is to use a calendar like google
calendar but not to design the day they
should have
use the calendar to design the day that
you would want to have
because you can make a calendar your
friend if you don't
make it a tyrant yeah so you don't want
to build a tyrant into the system
you want to be intelligent about it
because if you're going to schedule your
time
you have to understand that there are
things that you need to do
that you should do because if you don't
do them you're going to fall behind and
that will be counterproductive
it isn't because someone's wagging their
finger at you and saying that this is a
moral imperative even though that might
be part of it it's because
there are obligations that you have to
fulfill or you
fall farther behind and the obligations
get bigger
and that's a bad pathway so you have to
build some of that into the schedule but
a lot of it can be well okay
tomorrow i want to have the sort of day
that i would really be pleased at having
by the end of the day
and i want to build in a schedule that i
would stick to as well and so you have
to have some appreciation for your own
weaknesses
you lay out a schedule and you think
well would someone like me actually do
that yeah
and if the answer is no then you modify
the schedule until you
think that you would do it and that you
would be pleased if you did do it
and then then the schedule can start to
become your friend
and i think if you're not a person who's
orderly by nature
the schedule has to be your friend
because otherwise you won't use it so
it's funny you say that i just
my most recent book that i launched is
called routine equals results
and it's a very short concise book um
designed it to be because you don't want
war and peace on how to manage your
diary in your life
and it's pretty much exactly that i
think i just add a couple of little
things
the paradox again i'm obsessed by the
paradox and everything
um so you plan a schedule and i think
your distinction of the end of the day
you'll know you'll be pleased with
that's different from in
how you feel in the moment yeah yes
definitely because how can you
you need to second guess yourself to
know that you're doing the right thing
strategically but in the moment it might
frustrate you but at the end of the day
you'll be pleased and so that
requires discipline so i think if
someone sees a diary schedule
as an initial test so design the
structure like you so try and
end of the day i'm pleased test some
things never see anything as permanent
okay that worked for me at the end of
the day you've also got to monitor your
energy levels because we all eat at
different times
um and also this was really important
once i created this because i tested for
months
what coffee to drink at what time what
food did i eat at what time
obviously wrapping in my kids and my
vision work and all the things that were
for me non-negotiables in the day
doing some things i knew i'd wriggle out
of that i hate doing but i knew
like you said at the end of the day i'd
be proud that i did
because discipline while it's hard is
rewarding at the end when you you
feel that sense of deeper happiness when
you've gone through and those things
that you want to wriggle out of if you
do wriggle out of them
yeah so you've got to you've got to get
on top of those things
and then i found this important let
someone else manage your schedule
because i know what i'm like and i'll
wriggle out the very things that i know
are right for me because i can
yeah and whereas if you have an
assistant or even just a system
yeah the the you follow your diary
so you create the diary you test the
diary and then you give it to someone
else
to manage it because the amount of times
i'm saying to my assistant louise i
don't want to do that and she's like
you're doing it yeah because you know
that's the right thing well and you
might need like it might actually be
you say well you don't want to do it it
isn't that all of you is saying that
it's like the child
in my mind 51 of you doesn't want to do
it
or decaffeinated me yeah it could could
easily be but then if you have someone
else come along and say
no you need to do it then the 49 percent
of you that wants to do it all of a
sudden wins
because it gets that little extra boost
yeah and so it is very useful too to
know where your weaknesses are and then
to help
and to institute people around you who
will buttress you at your weak points
so and everyone has their weak points
they're the comp they're they what
they're the
they're the uh the counterpart to their
strong points
so this is again the paradox thing that
like i really want to get this message
out that you cannot have one without the
other you can't have all the upside
without the downside
and i think most of us it's easy to see
downside when it's there we're probably
all focused on that and when we're
feeling good it's easy to
see upside and if i think of anything
good in my life that's happened
business financial whatever it's in
seeing the upside when all i initially
would have seen is downside
and vice versa so any team members
around you that challenge you
that you might ordinarily push away see
the upside in their skill traits and
their personality traits
like the people who hold you back will
actually they stop you making from a
mistake make making mistakes and they
pre-select your ideas for you and let
you go with the ones that really are
good
yeah they're also they also sort of
represent they also represent
the resistant marketplace right so if
you if you have a scheme that you're
putting forward and
you can't sell it internally well those
people are representative of
at least in part of the people you're
going to try to sell to externally
and so again that's the advantage of
quick failure if you can't make the sale
within your own organization it's like
well
that's possibly because what you're
selling isn't going to sell
so or that or you're not very good at
selling it you haven't crafted your
message properly
the the one of the things you pointed
out earlier with regards to the ability
to tolerate strife and
conflict and the paradoxes that's
absolutely
crucially important because there really
isn't any more anything
any different than that there's nothing
in that that's any different from
actually
thinking because thinking actually is
conflict it's the pitting of opposing
viewpoints against one another
and it's very stressful and and and
and and produces a tremendous amount of
tension but
the question is in part do you want to
figure that out in abstraction
even though that's very stressful or do
you want to live that out in the world
and the answer is man you better think
it through because even though that's
stressful it's way less stressful than
than than living it out in the world so
and it is so useful to be in that
tension
of opposing opinions so even though it's
hard
yeah where much innovation much
creativity many solutions to problems
they're like that
that next stage beyond that tension
aren't they which of course
emotionally none of us want to go
through so we try and avoid it
play safe or whatever put it off yeah so
or not say what you think because then
that conflict won't emerge
that's another advantage to being around
disagreeable people
agreeable people say agreeable people
won't produce a lot of conflict yeah
but disagreeable people tell you what
they think
and maybe it's vital to have people
around that yeah because the ego
completely well that's well that's
another thing especially you start to
become successful
like well you need some constraints on
your egotism yes well so then you need
disagreeable people around you because
they'll provide that constraint
yeah and and you and you also pointed
out that let's say you're successful and
that makes you happy
right and it might and and that's part
of that ego inflation process is
positive emotion people that have a lot
of positive emotion
are impulsive because positive emotion
says make hay while the sun shines yeah
and
fair enough but that can lead you down a
very impulsive path you see that with
people who are manic
because they're really really full of
positive emotions which is sometimes the
scariest but my dad has the manic
depression
um and sometimes when he's the highest
that's the scariest oh definitely
oh absolutely yeah yeah and you've sort
of semi-relieved
because he's out of the depths yeah but
it's a big warning sign yeah yeah i've
made some of my biggest
mistakes in life when i've been whoa
right right well that's exactly
it is that you have that motivational
impetus but it's unconstrained
and so that's that's that you're
absolutely right that's un and and of
course
depression is an absolute catastrophe
for people but it's
in people in their manic phase that go
and rack up fifty thousand dollars in
credit card bills in one day because
they have this brilliant idea
that's going to revolutionize the world
and you know maybe it will but
but then you end up with the 50 000 or
the 500
000 in rapidly accrued debt yeah and and
you can certainly see that in the
explosive phase of development of
of companies when everyone's hyper
enthusiastic it's like
fair enough and the enthusiasm also
sells right because
it's hard to be a non-enthusiastic
salesperson but
but then there you know everyone says
well shouldn't we
just be happy all the time it's like
well there's another podcast on that
yeah well
no no because the first question is well
what's the downside to positive emotion
well there's no downside we should be
just as happy as we can be it's like no
manic people humanity would be gone in a
generation if there was no
if there was just happy emotion nothing
would get done
nothing would get fixed and we'd make
all sorts of we take all sorts of risks
that would
be catastrophic so yeah you think well
you need people who say no
god that's painful you need people who
get in the way you need people who are
orderly
and for people who are entrepreneurial
and expansive in their temperaments
that's all like oh my god those are
prison walls
but no they're not they're necessary
structure and protection
and then again don't be contemptuous of
your damn sales and marketing people
because you're bloody lucky that you've
got them
and they're rare people and that's also
true of that set of skills that you
might
that's a set of skills you need to
develop if you're if you're a creative
person and an artist
don't be contemptuous of that with your
false romanticism yeah
i shouldn't have to sell it it's it's
it's a great product in and of itself
and
all i'm doing is selling out yes like
most people don't sell
out because they never have the damn
opportunity and so if you can manage the
sales
and then you think well i'm going to
maintain my artistic purity
despite the fact that you could manage
the sales well then you're making an
ethical decision
but if you're not selling out because no
one wants what you're doing
that's no moral victory yeah well i mean
some of the most successful artists in
the world because i wrote a book called
money and i've studied this in depth
being a previous artist myself so like
commercially i made business work but
commercially i couldn't make artwork
but my business commercially has really
benefited from my artistic side right
um and you know i could say it's a shame
i failed commercially in art but maybe
that was
brought me to who where i was but damien
hirst tracey emin
picasso um warhol all very commercially
savvy
yeah artists so you could argue till the
cows come home if they're better or
worse artists than others that's
subjective isn't it
but they embraced the commercial side of
art
and they will probably go down in
history so and well
you know that's the thing too is that
the there isn't a lot of difference
or the boundaries between sales and
marketing and communicating
are are blurry it's like well you know
people are also very skeptical for
example of advertising and find it
intrusive but you know
if you actually want to buy something an
advertisement is quite helpful so what
people really don't like are badly
targeted ads
and you know the advertising people are
trying to solve that problem but
there but if you have done something
brilliant and original and no one knows
about it and no one ever will
well that might even be more of a
catastrophe than never having done it at
all because
then you have this thing that's actually
of value and you have to suffer with the
fact that
no one knows about it right no you have
to conjoin that ability to
produce creatively with the ability to
communicate yeah and
sales and marketing isn't that common
part well that's the next complex
problem and you know and people often
who are artists they're
they're also contemptuous of the
commercial world well everything has a
price it's like
well there's actually some real
advantage to everything having a price
you know because it helps you it helps
you value your work in a
in a cooperative endeavor and it also
puts a limitation of sorts on you
because you need limitations it's like
well
if you have an idea let's say you're
creative you have a whole bunch of ideas
it's like well which ideas should you
pursue well one constraint you can use
is something like
if the idea that i'm interested in has
absolutely no commercial viability
then maybe i should put it lower in the
priority list
because you need some mechanism to put
things lower in the priority list
one of our rules for for product
development was that
well we had to we had to like the idea
it had to be compelling
we had we wanted it not to do harm to
people we wanted it to help people we
wanted it to be scalable
but then we also decided very early on
that we weren't going to make things
that wouldn't generate a profit
because it was a constraint it's like
well if we can't do all those other
things and make a profit
it's a bad idea yeah so and and
and that's that that's helpful if you
have too many ideas
and what people don't understand is
profit is required to reinvest back into
infrastructure for growth and everything
else
yeah and i used to be an artist and i
had to buy the cheapest canvases with
the cheapest paint
and the cheapest tools because i had no
money yeah you know harry's just bought
you've just upgraded these cameras
haven't you
well if he was you know picking
butts off off the floor
and going down kfc licking people's
fingers for food
no kidding no kidding well the other
thing too is we could get the ethics
about this right it's like
well is there something wrong with with
generating money it's like
well it depends on what you're going to
do with the money
you know like if you're going to spend
it all on hookers and cocaine
then probably that's reprehensible but
if you're going to
still employs the hookers well
commercials right the hookers might not
think it's reprehensible
i suppose neither do the cocaine growers
but you know you can you can argue that
there are better and worse things that
you could do with your money
if you're guilty about making money then
maybe you should think
harder about what the hell you're going
to do with the money because there's
some good things you can do
why you feel guilty about making money
in the first place and where that comes
from
yeah yeah yeah and what's productive
about you say well i don't want to be
greedy it's like
okay don't be greedy good rule
but you know you have a family you could
support them you could invest the money
in the community there's all sorts of
positive things that you could do with
your money if you were very very
thoughtful about how you decided to
spend it people didn't get it
to jump in people don't get that mother
teresa was basically a money launderer
they just don't get this a lot of her
money came from robert maxwell and
you know a lot of people that would be
reprehensibly evil to
most of society but she would take money
she didn't mind where it came from and
then she would do her work
with said money yeah instead of being
guilty about making money you could
think hard about what yes i'll take the
money
do with it and do something useful with
it and productive yeah that's a much
and i would say that's also your
response if you happen to be
one of those people to whom money is
disproportionately flowing
right because you've started to become
successful and you've hit that
acceleration point where
you're getting more because you already
have then the ethical
requirement isn't to be guilty about
that but to think okay how
can i use this money which i have been
bequeathed in the most responsible
manner possible
and that's a perfectly reasonable thing
to think and you can do that
with some error yeah so of course so
we've got to start wrapping this up
we've got to sort of wrap it up now
all right then yeah sure
okay okay yep you need a meaning to
sustain you through life and
most of that meaning is actually to be
found and this goes back to the idea of
of conscientiousness that we were
talking about earlier
is it's in the adoption of
responsibility that most people find the
fundamental meanings in their life
that's really worth knowing because you
might ask well why should i be
responsible the answer is well
you need to do something meaningful
because otherwise life suffering will
make you
bitter and bitter is only where you
start it's not where you end
so people might be interested in the
book i also i told you about
understandmyself.com where you can get
your personality assessed quite rapidly
that should be useful i also have this
other program that your view
listeners might be interested in at self
authoring.com
and that is three programs one helps you
write about your past life so that you
can figure out
how you got to where you are and where
you are
one helps you do an assessment of your
virtues and
and and faults so that you can
capitalize on your virtues and rectify
your faults and the last one which we've
most
thoroughly tested helps you develop a
personal vision and
create an implementable plan for that
vision and we know that if university
students do that for example
that they're about 25 percent less
likely to drop out of college
so and it's really useful for people to
have a
articulated and consciously developed
vision for their life and a plan
because then you're not buffeted around
by the the winds of fate to quite such a
degree and you need a plan you need a
plan because you need goals and you need
goals because
it's in the pursuit of valued goals that
almost everyone
finds positive emotion so
and that's a really useful thing to know
and so what that also means is the more
noble your goals which is the theme and
12 rules for life
the higher the probability that you'll
be deeply engaged while you're pursuing
them
that's a justification for deep
philosophy
okay jordan thank you very much thanks a
lot yeah you too thank you