THE STARTUP CHAT

Steli Efti:

Hey, everybody, this is Steli Efti.

Hiten Shah:

This is Hiten Shah, and today on the Startup Chat, Steli decided we’re going to  do a wild episode. The last time he decided something like this we ended up  with a whole podcast. The whole thing started that way.

Steli Efti:

That is kind of true.

Hiten Shah:

I am dying. For the last 30 seconds I’ve been like, “All right, what’s this  going to be about? All right, what’s this going to be about?” Steli, what’s up?  Let’s go.

Steli Efti:

Here’s the deal, right? This is going to be like a ranty type of an  episode. We just had an interaction, we just talked for, like … Just kind of  a behind of the scenes for everybody that’s listening, out of the hour every week that we talk and we’re trying to record three 20 minute episodes, there’s maybe one  minute that’s not recorded. We don’t spend a lot of time chit-chatting between or before  episodes, or talking about what we’re going to talk about in much detail. We’re really  free-styling. These are real conversations, first take, there’s no editing that’s happening afterwards or nothing.  We just had a 20 second interaction about a topic that I was like, “Hiten,  what about this? Should we talk about this in this way?” You said something that  triggered this rant in me, which is like, “Yeah, people don’t want to hear the  real answer to things.” Here’s my rant. Here’s something that I’ve been thinking about, and  it’s two-sided. One, there’s a lot of people that come to me, especially now. I’m  doing a lot of public speaking, right? We both do a lot of talks. I  probably even moreso than you, because you say just no to a ton more.

Hiten Shah:

You do. Yeah, you do.

Steli Efti:

You’re just a lot more selective. You’re not traveling. If it’s not in the Bay  area, it’s very hard to get you to give a talk. I’m breaking hearts left  and right. There’s not a week where I don’t tell somebody, “No, Hiten’s not going  to give a talk at your conference. Can already tell you because he would have  to fly, so I’m not going to even bother him about it.” People ask me  all the time to invite you to speak to them.

Hiten Shah:

I appreciate that, Steli. I’ll let you know when I’m open, I didn’t realize that.  I don’t want to break hearts, but I

Steli Efti:

I give a ton of talks, and then oftentimes people, especially other speakers, will come  and will want to talk to me and basically try to figure out how to  give good talks. There’s the same question, but it’s asked in multiple ways. It’s like,  how do I give a really compelling talk, or how do I write really great  blog content? How do I put together a really amazing newsletter, or how do I  do really great YouTube videos, or whatever it is. How do I create an incredibly  compelling content? A lot of times when I ask them, when I give the question  back and ask them, “Why do you think this is working?” I go, “What do  you think is compelling about my talk?” or, “What did you like about what I  do?” A lot of people will look at the superficial side of things, like the  style, and they will forget about the substance. Here’s my main statement that I don’t  think most people don’t want to hear this, which is that, to give really great  talks, and to share really great stories on stage, and to write really amazing blog  posts, you have to have lived a lot of life. You have to have a  lot of fucking experiences. You have to have eaten a lot of shit, you’ve had  to had a lot of glamorous successes. You have to do shit to have things  to talk about, to have stories to talk about, to have answers to difficult questions,  to have solutions to difficult problems that people have. Not just solutions and stories that  are on the superficial level, but you share things with people that come from experience  and come from a deep-rooted wisdom moreso than just superficial knowledge. You have to put in the work. You just have to put in the work. If you want to  be a great storyteller, you have to have a fucking interesting life. You have to  take risks. You have to go be out there in the world doing things, experiencing  things so you have stories to tell. You can’t just be reading Reddit and whatever  the fuck people read all day, Hacker News and whatever, and then think that you  can write amazing stuff or you can share amazing stories on stage. One of the  reasons, and this might sound too self … I don’t know, maybe this is not  humble enough. One of the reasons why we can have conversations without having to do  a lot of scripting or editing is that you and I have a lot of  experience. We’ve done a lot of different things. It’s not that hard for us to  talk about things and have stories to share or tactics to share. I could go  on and keep ranting, but I’m actually curious to your response to this. This is  like the broccoli and workout answer to how can I lose weight? The unpopular thing  everybody already knows but doesn’t want to do. It takes time, it takes hard work,  it takes dedication, and you have to put in a lot into life to get  a lot out of. If you want to have compelling things to share with the  world, you have to have done shit. Am I crazy here?

Hiten Shah:

Yeah. Of course you’re crazy. I love what you said, but there’s one thing I  don’t want people to take away the wrong way. I like the idea that if  you’re going to give a great talk, write great content, write great emails, do great marketing, be a storyteller to some extent, that you have to take some personal experience,  take what you’ve done and actually put it out there and use that as a  way to build an audience, or write compelling things, or have passion about something so  it comes across when you sort of speak and talk, and all this stuff. I  really love that. I would never, ever disagree with that, because it’s a pattern I’ve  seen, it’s a pattern you’ve seen. The one part that I would say I wouldn’t  want the audience to take away is that you need to have the experience. What  I mean by that is, if you’ve never given a talk before or you’ve never  written a piece of content before for an audience for any reason, or even written  a long Facebook post, let’s just make it a little bit easier, or maybe a  great tweet, I think that doesn’t need you need to go get experience to go  do it. It just means that you need to think harder about your own experience  and how can it be compelling to someone else for you to share it. I  can probably pick anyone, even a 18-year-old, and dig out a nugget, it might take  a while, but dig out a nugget. Take a while meaning, not about being drunk  at parties or something like that. Take a nugget that I heard from them and  help them turn it into a story that’s compelling for whatever they’re trying to do.  I think it’s more about, there’s a lot of ways to do the work. I  would just say, do the work would be really what this episode’s probably about. I  used that word when we were talking earlier. I’m like, “Nobody wants to hear it,  they don’t want to hear that it just takes work.” Doing the work could mean  a lot of different things. In this case, if you’re not experienced or feel like  you aren’t, I wouldn’t want you to think that you have to go get it.  I would say that you already have it, you just don’t know how to communicate  it, or you don’t know how what you’re trying to do can relate to it.  I’m finding this more and more. When we were talking about these different topics that  we could talk about and this do the work came up, for me what I  realized is people just generally don’t want to hear that effort is what it takes  to go figure something out. Steli was asking something really specific that I’m not ready  to share yet, I’m not sure I will be, because my answer’s going to be  very much the same because I’ve been doing the work. I’ve been literally doing the  work and learning these new things, and wracking my brain on it, having arguments with  people about it that don’t mean anything anymore five minutes later. It’s very stressful, to  be honest, in the moment. Right now I can completely laugh about it and so  can they. It takes work. You have to be willing to do it, and you  have to almost have a leap of faith that it’s worth it. I think what  a lot of people get caught up in is that, Hiten, you’re famous, to some  extent, or you have an audience or something, so this is easy for you. You  know what? Fuck, no. It’s just as hard as when I first started, and all  I know how to do, and, Steli, I know you’ll agree with this, is just  put in the work, put in the effort, just go do it. Just literally push  yourself through it and take whatever pain it requires. The whole analogy about working out,  building muscle, having those small tears that hurt and make your muscles sore, that I  love and hate at the same time, that’s the work. Just take that analogy to  town and find a way to feel that in whatever you’re doing, including if you  feel like you have no experience. I bet there’s experience that you have that you  could share and turn into whatever you want.

Steli Efti:

I love that. That’s true. As you were talking about this, I don’t know, I  agree with you that everybody has a story to share, and everybody, if they look  close enough and be open enough and authentic enough, they’ll find something. Even giving your  first talk itself can be part of your talk, the nervousness, the trying to figure  out how to provide value to the audience. There’s a story there. Why were you  invited in the first place, and all that. The do the work part is, be  prepared to do the unglamorous work. I think really it’s that. I think that in  today’s world, there’s so much focus on the shortcut. There’s so much focus on the  hack, and what’s the scalable hackity hacky thing I can do to get to some  massive result in some very little time with very little effort. I think that that’s  kind of the most popular story that’s being shared, especially in the entrepreneurship community and  startup community. That everybody’s just trying to get there with the least amount of effort.  What we have, I think, always been big champions of, and this is what do  the work really means, is there’s no shortcut worth taking. Put in the effort. Whatever  you put in, you’ll get out. You need to put in the work, you need  to do the work. It’s the basics. It’s not that complicated to do, it’s just  things that probably you really don’t want to do. It’s the, why there are a  million diet books and a gazillion diet regimens out there in the world, because people,  when you tell them just eat healthy and move your body, they go, “Yeah, but  I don’t want to do that. What’s the other solution to my problem? I want  to lose weight, but I don’t want to do the things that I know how  to do to lose weight.” These things are not glamorous, these things are not fun,  these things are really inconvenient, these things, for whatever reason, are not the things that  people want to do. I think we all have this in our lives where there’s  obvious answers, but we’re still looking for the solution because we don’t like the answer  or the solution that is right in front of us. With a lot of this  stuff, like writing compelling content, is one example of what we’re talking about. The way  to do that, as you said, there’s no shortcut thing. You have to do the  work, you have to put in the effort to make it really, really great. You  have to keep putting in the effort and keep improving on it. Is this like  an old man syndrome? Is this kind of like a, this young generation doesn’t do  it, or is this really a trend that I’m seeing of the hacking being such  a big term and idea, and automating things, and hacking, and scaling, and outsourcing. This  idea of you don’t have to work really hard, you just have to be really  smart. Recently there was a pretty popular Twitter thread, you might have seen this. I  don’t even remember who started this where somebody was saying, it’s actually pretty insulting to  think that you can just be outsmarting the smartest people on Earth. Eventually being smart  is not enough and you’ll have to outwork all the other really smart people that  compete with you. I don’t know if you saw that.

Hiten Shah:

I did. This is not old man syndrome, this is like hard truths that if  you haven’t seen the effects of working like this, you probably don’t appreciate it as  much. To me this is hard truths, this is not old man syndrome. We are  old men now, I would say in a lot of ways. At least, I feel  like it every day.

Steli Efti:

Wise men. Let’s use that terminology.

Hiten Shah:

I don’t know what’s going to happen in another 35 years or how I’m going  to feel, but I’ll probably feel young by then. Right now I feel old as  fuck. It’s a good point. I think it’s just like, once you’ve been through enough  life experiences, you just realize that nothing’s going to get done unless I put in  effort, nothing. What I mean by that is, nothing meaningful.

Steli Efti:

I love it. I think we’ll wrap this episode up with those last famous words.  Do the work. There’s no way around that, just do the work, put in the  effort. I think that’s it from us.

Hiten Shah:

See you.