THE STARTUP CHAT

Steli Efti:

Hi everyone, this is Steli Efti.

Hiten Shah:

And this is Hiten Shah.

Steli Efti:

And in today’s episode of “The Startup Chat ” we’re going to talk about how the two  of us, the strategies we use to choose the people we surround ourselves with. So,  if you’ve been a longtime listener of the Startup Chat , you know that both Hiten and  I have talked about how we choose the people in our lives and how we  build kind of our network and how we hand-picked our friends. And kind of the  strategies that we use. Hiten, you have actually talked about this even a lot more  than I have in terms of how people are the main driver of how you work on projects, how you motivate yourself, how you get into new fields. So, I  felt like there could be a whole episode in there, in terms of how to  choose your friends or how to choose the people you surround yourself with. How to  think about the people that are in your life. So I wanted to explore that  field a little bit more with you. Let’s talk about, you know, you’ve articulated this  pretty well in the past a number of times, like how important people are in  your life. What don’t you kick things off and share a little bit about kind  of your thinking there and your experiences?

Hiten Shah:

Yeah, I think this has, to me, it has a ton to do with what  kind of person you are and what you, whether it’s what you believe you need  or what you actually need, which are two separate things and we probably don’t need  to get into that part. But, in my mind, like … I … Like I’ll  give an example. So, one of my co-founders, Neil, he’s very good at like, independently  coming up with his own idea and then basically going after it. Whether it’s like  finding someone that can help him or just, like, he’s literally created several different blogs  of his own to many hundreds of thousands, if not millions of visitors. He’s …  probably the number one marketer on the planet just because of what he wants. And  so he’s able to define these things and then go after them and do it  in what I would call a very individualist pursuit. And that’s just the way his  mind works. That’s the way his mindset is. What he is generally averse to or  more challenged with, even though I think he could be great at it, is just  where he hasn’t spent his time, is he doesn’t really enjoy managing people or hiring  a ton of people and having to deal with whatever that looks like. In terms  of management. Let’s just call it management. That’s never been something he enjoys doing. I’ve  seen him do it, but I don’t think it’s something he enjoys by any bit.  And there’s some extent of it that he has to do. In my case, so  I guess for him, people don’t necessarily give him energy. Other people. I think he’s  pretty neutral on it or maybe even slightly negative on it ’cause you know, it’s  just not how he thinks. In my case, it’s much easier for me to be  motivated because there’s somebody else around or other people doing things and that has a  lot to do with I think, being more on the manager side and less on  what many would call like a maker. Right? So if you up to Neil, he’s  more of a maker, less of a manager. If you look at me, I definitely tend to be more of a manager, less of a maker. That being said, these  days, a lot of days I’m making stuff, all day, whether it’s specs or emails  or even this podcast is making, right? But I’m doing it with somebody else in 99% of the cases or because of somebody else or something like that. So I  guess for me, I get a lot of energy by having and knowing that there  are other people involved in what I’m doing. And it’s a very, again, I still  put this as a very personal thing, right? I’m not sure how you are Sully  but like for me, like knowing that there’s a team dependent on what we do  together is much more motivating than me being dependent on myself to go get something  done.

Steli Efti:

It’s super interesting. Yeah. I think that I’m much closer to you, although I’m kind  of binary on this. I’ve told this, I think, before, that I kind of two  switches. I either want to be enveloped by thousands of people right, on a stage, or I want to be completely alone. So, typically I design my life in a  way where when I’m home I’m actually not that social. I don’t do a lot  of dinners and coffees, I don’t do meet-ups, I don’t go to conferences typically. I  just go to work and then go home to play with my kids and I’m  not that social. But then when I travel and I do conferences and I do  team retreats and I visit customers, I’m uber social. So, I kind of get burned  out on both ends, but I like both extremes. I don’t really like the middle  as much. But that’s how I’ve kind of designed my life and my days. When  it comes to like the people that I choose, the thing that I’ve noticed, a  pattern that I’ve noticed is that I love to surround myself with people that are  fairly different than I am in ways that help me be more than I am  on my own. So, this could go all the way from having co-founders that are  very complementary skill sets and there’s not that much overlap of what we’re really good  at and what we really enjoy. But we heavily enjoy each other and respect each  other and value each other and want to spend time together, although we don’t have  many complementary skills or we don’t like doing the same type of activity. It starts  with that but it’s also in my personal life, a very heavy representation of my  friends, in my personal life, are people that are particularly good or extreme in a  way that I’m not. But I want that kind of element in my life so  I’ll give you an example. You know, I’m very, I’m a good, to use your  metaphor, you know the Batman and Robin metaphor, most interpersonal relationships somebody has to be  like the main act and somebody is a supporter? I’m not a good Batman when it comes to like being adventurous, like I’m not going to come up with a  plan of doing something crazy and adventurous for a group of people and then lead  the charge, in my personal life. But I want to have more adventure in my  personal life, I want to do crazy unique funny stupid stuff, I want to do  new things. So I have all these friends that are very adventurous and will be  organizing trips and just continuously have these new personal hobbies that are interesting. And they’ll  be organizing groups and explorations and funny, you know, weekend trips and whatever else they’re  doing. And by having them in my life and by being friends with them I get the benefit and I’m a very strong support of these things. So anybody wants  to go on a crazy adventure, I’m always down to do it immediately and to  support, but I’m not the one that initiates that, in my personal life. So, I need these people. I have people that are incredibly silly and funny and I want  that in my life but I’m not the person that is necessarily silly and funny  all the time. I’m a fairly serious guy. So, when I look at my circle  of friends and the people that I spend most time with personally, many of them  are different in ways that I want, different from me in ways that I want  represented in my life. So I pick and choose these people because I know that  their influence will make my life richer and more colorful and more enjoyable and will  push me to growth. And I’ve noticed that pattern throughout my life but today, if  you took stock of kind of my friends and family and my surrounding and my  network and the people I spend a lot of time with, the people that are  put in a position that allows them to influence me heavily, it’s always people that  are very different from me in a way that I, in a way and in  a element that I seek in my life. So I think without ever articulating that  strategy consciously, I’ve never gone by like, oh, I’ve never written this down, I’ve never  made a list, I’ve never made a circle and wrote down the names of the  people, kind of the things, I’ve never been very analytical. But if you take stock  of my network and the people in my life, I’ve noticed, holy shit, like there’s  a very deliberal pattern of what type of people I have in my life and  it always kind of matches the things that I want to grow into, the things  I want to have in my life that I don’t have yet enough of, or  that I myself am not, you know, enough to drive that, if that makes any  sense.

Hiten Shah:

Yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense. It’s like … It’s just really fascinating  to see kind of how, you know, different people are and what really gets them  motivated to get up and do something, right? Whether it’s personal or professional, like for  me, generally in my personal life, I’m pretty similar. I have friends who are adventurous  and stuff like that. I don’t necessarily go along with their adventures but I do  love to hear about them. So, that’s usually my extent of it.

Steli Efti:

Yeah.

Hiten Shah:

You know? But I do understand what you’re saying. Yeah, this is really interesting because  at least the way I think about, on the professional side and doing business, there  are very few people that can get things done on their own. And for many  many businesses, so there’s a bunch of different kinds of businesses. Let’s say there’s like  software businesses where usually you’re going to have people that are either all engineers or  there’s a hybrid of engineers and non-engineers. And that really makes a big difference as  to what the company does and how they think about things. And then if you  look at businesses that are not software, a lot of them are actually started by  an individual person and a set of contractors. This is a lot of like info  products online or you know, even solo printers which are basically the idea that you’re  a solo entrepreneur. And one thing I’ve noticed is that, and this is what’s been  interesting to me about this conversation too is that eventually these organizations, these businesses go  beyond a single person or even the early set of people. And it becomes somebody’s responsibility, usually it’s one person, could be more, to essentially wrangle all the people, right?  And make sure there’s some level of what old-school you would call management going on.  Otherwise, things fall apart pretty fast. So I’ve noticed so many companies that are started  by a single person, just to take that example. The single person started it, they  could do a lot of stuff on their own and then when they are challenged  to manage, they fail.

Steli Efti:

Yeah.

Hiten Shah:

And the only way those people get through it is by luck. And what I  mean by that is they happen to find one person or another person that is  actually really good at managing or good enough. And they take the brunt of the organization, even if that’s not their title, even if they’re not the COO or something.  They end up being responsible for so many other human beings in that org. Because  the person who started it, let’s say the founder, is no good at it. Because  the skill set of starting something is a lot different. The skill set of starting  something is a lot different in a lot of cases when you’re individual to being  able to scale the organization. Especially if you really don’t really understand that you’re not  a good manager.

Steli Efti:

Yeah.

Hiten Shah:

And you scale your business by at one point, at some point, just hiring more  and more people. There are like hundred person organizations that I look at sometimes and  I’m like, wow, the person who started it has no idea how terrible the job  they’re doing managing this hundred person team. And it’s just that luck of that one  person they found who can just run it, but the consciousness in that person about  how good or great they are at managing that team is very low. Like they  don’t realize it. So, I just wanted to point that out that like, it’s really about realizing what you’re good at, what you’re not good at. Like, Neil doesn’t want  to manage a hundred people, like it’s not his thing, he wouldn’t want that-

Steli Efti:

Yeah.

Hiten Shah:

…right? He’d want someone else to do it, right? In my case it’s like, I  don’t want to do it on my own. I’d rather, give me a thousand people,  give me ten thousand people, it’s okay. Like we’ll deal with that. That’s actually relatively  easy, it doesn’t give me any anxiety compared to having to go do something all  on my own.

Steli Efti:

Yeah, I think it all comes back to kind of self awareness and self acceptance.  And then realizing that even if you’re somebody that likes to do everything on their  own, do you truly understand that fact? And do you accept it? And if you  do so, what are the consequences of it? Which is one of two things right,  either you decide to always stay a solo … Solo printer or solo person that  freelance or contractor, just always do your own thing, deliver the work and never try  to do anything beyond that. Or, the other option is that you try to find  somebody that like. The third option is you just get lucky, you don’t know what  you’re doing. But the second real option I think here is that you realize who  you are and who you aren’t and depending on your goals and the outcomes are  that you’re trying to generate, you realize that you need to have a partner, you  want to have a partner that loves what you hate and hates what you love  so you make a good team, right? And I think most of us don’t really consciously think about how they chose their co-founders, how they chose their early team members,  how they’re choosing their employees, but also even on the personal level, to push it  back there, how they’re choosing their friends and the people they spend time with, right.  For most people it’s much more of a random act and I don’t think that  that’s necessarily a problem if the people that you’re surrounding yourself with, if they’re making  your life better, if they’re pushing you forward, if they’re making you happier, if they’re  making you more successful. Then it doesn’t matter if you’re conscious of it or not,  you’re doing something right and you should do more of it. But if you feel  like you’re lacking something in your life or you feel like a lot of people  in your life are draining your energy and you know, when you spend time with  them you’re exhausted afterwards and you’re feeling less and not like more, then it might  make sense to actually take stock of the people and how you choose them, how  you select the people that you’re surrounding yourself with. And try a different strategy and  try to do something different. And most people actually, most people I would venture to  say are surrounding themselves with, the strategy they use to pick the people in their  lives are either random, kind of just based on proximity and random luck like whoever  is available closest to me, or based on similarities. Like they’re looking for people that is similar as they can be in terms of this person has the same hobbies,  the same interests, the same background, the same upbringing. So, they seem very familiar to  me hence why I like them in that they like me so they’re creating these  clusters that are very similar. And therefore, I think also limited in terms of how  much wealth, how much diversity, how much growth, how much value they can bring to  your life. I think, I don’t know, let’s wrap this episode up with some tips  Hiten, what do you think?

Hiten Shah:

Yeah, let’s do a, I can start. So if you’re looking to figure out for  yourself, you know, whether you’re sort of more of a maker or a manager just  in general as a human, it doesn’t even matter if you’re an engineer or not  a engineer or anything. I don’t think that makes you a maker or a manager.  You just want to think about … The tip that I would give is just  thinking through, when there are other people around that you … Have a responsibility for,  are you really interested in unblocking them or not? And what I mean by that  is do you naturally go towards, “Okay, what can I do to help them do  their job? What am I doing that’s holding them back?” Are you naturally thinking about  those things or are you more thinking about “How could I just do their job  for them?” And if you’re thinking about “How can I do their job for them?”  Or “I can do the job better than them”, then it’s likely that you’re more  on the maker side of the current moment. Or like if you’re really thinking about  “How do I enable them? How do I empower them?”, just your natural inclination, you’re  probably more on the manager side. It’s just something to think about it. I’m not  saying that you can’t be both. I actually tend to have learned to be both.  But it’s a simple way to think about where do you naturally gravitate towards –  doing the work or helping someone else do the work?

Steli Efti:

I love it. It’s just a simple but beautiful way to kind of, assess where  you are right now. And again, if you know where you are, it’s much easier  for you to get to where you want to go and help others to get  there. So love that, so my tip is a simple one so instead of telling  you to take stock of your personal and work and get rid of the people  that are evil or bad or whatever, energy-sucking, my tip is to do the opposite.  Just ask yourself, who is a person that I wish I could spend more time  with? Doesn’t matter if it’s in your company and team, doesn’t matter if it’s a  friend or family member, just think of a human. I think we all have these  people in our lives. Somebody that, for whatever reason, gives you so much energy, so  much pleasure, so much joy. It’s somebody that you instantly gravitate to and you go,  “I wish I had more time with this person. I wish I would spend more  time with this person.” And then, ask yourself, how can I make more time this  month to spend more time with that individual? So, pick a person that you wish  you could spend more time with and come up with a game plan to make  time for that person. We don’t make enough time for the right type of people  in our lives. So that’s my tip for the episode today.

Hiten Shah:

Great.

Steli Efti:

Awesome. That’s it from us.

Hiten Shah:

Later.