Ryan Rutan: Welcome back to the episode of the Startup Therapy podcast. This is Ryan Ran joined as always by my friend, the founder and CEO of Startups.com, Will Schroeder. Well, one of the hardest parts of being a founder. Is building the company while realizing that you're not fully in sync lockstep synchronicity with the people around you, and you know, we hear people say things like, you know, build alignment, they forget to tell you in the brochure is that alignment is is largely fictional, and like, we love, of course, we love to imagine that we're all on the same team. But like, ever watched the ship take on water, it becomes really apparent who has a life vest and who doesn't like super fast. And so after decades of trying to force alignment, I think I've realized it's less about sinking goals and more about managing fundamentally misaligned expectations,
Wil Schroter: yeah, and foundations,
Ryan Rutan: right? The big, the big question is, you know, are, are we really aligned with everyone around us, our employees, co-founders, even our spouses, right?
Wil Schroter: Are we? Right, you, you and I did a whole episode on this as it related to investors, because investors love to say, you know, we're gonna be on the same side of the table and we're aligned, and I'm like, no, you're not. They're cheating
Ryan Rutan: because they mean that, but it's a round table, will, so it's not, it's not fair. It's a round table so just by definition, we're all on the same side that's.
Wil Schroter: I just think about it like I thought that argument was so hollow and it sounds cool, but it's just so incredibly untrue. But with this episode, I think we need to go beyond the investors because this same fake alignment problem where we wanna be aligned, but we're just not, is, as you said, as much of a problem with co-founders, with employees, with spouses, and I think we should talk about spouses too, because they're like the unsung hero or villain, and on how your relationship goes.
Ryan Rutan: They're an ever present high leverage personality in all of this, right?
Wil Schroter: Yeah, you know, right, I've never thought about it like that, a high leverage personality. That's absolutely true. That's really well put.
Ryan Rutan: It'll be the last time I say something that's smart today. So we're done.
Wil Schroter: Thank you everybody for being part of the Thursday podcast. I'm done. So, let me say this, I struggled with this concept of alignment for decades, because I wanted to believe, and I think a lot of other people do too. I wanted to believe optimistically. That I could have this like symbiotic perfect alignment with all the people in my life. And if that if that alignment didn't exist, it was just some sort of like Lego piece I was missing to complete the set, right? It never occurred to me, it does now, that the alignment was so far off to begin with, that crossing that that. chasm, it's way harder than I thought it would be. And and again, I think today as we unpack why those chasms are so significant, even in stuff like co-founders, we're supposed to be in the same place. I think it's a big deal.
Ryan Rutan: Yeah, it is, and I think it's another one of these things. I, I, I seem to keep echoing this, but it's one of those things that starts at that really early stage. And then we carry it forward in a lot of cases unnecessarily. I, I realized at some point that one of the reasons I was looking for that alignment, the reason I wanted it so desperately to be aligned, was that at the early stage of a startup, very little is working, right? So it was almost as if, as long as everybody else was aligned with me, like as long as everybody else sort of like felt like what I was doing was the right thing, like it was some form of another like a validation, or maybe it was just even as simple as like. If everybody else could have the rose colored glasses on, I could keep swimming through the mire, right? Just like somehow I needed that alignment psychologically, less actually, like, from a from a practical standpoint, I didn't actually need them to do anything, right? Like, I don't need my spouse to be align with me so that I can go do the thing I have to do, or that she can do the thing that she needs to do. I just wanted it to be. I wanted to be so that I could feel good about going and doing what I had to do. It wasn't fundamentally gonna stop me from doing it, and yet it can.
Wil Schroter: It also feels a lot different when it's when it's not aligned, right? There's one thing I, I don't need all of your support, but getting negative support where you're actually tearing me down, it's definitely a problem. You know, right, I'm, I'm gonna rewind back circa 2012, 2013, so somewhere in that era, OK? I'm deep in the archives, deep in the archives, and you and I are just starting to hire this new entrant into the workforce called Millennium. OK, yeah, yeah, now, now, and again, I hate when people do this like like generational class warfare, etc. but I and I know a lot of our audience are, you know, are millennials, so, so bear with me when I say this, right? Ryan and I are are are in the, the Gen X category. None of this matters. I'm just pointing out this was our first time like in our 30s. Hiring a generation that wasn't us,
Ryan Rutan: right? They were just entering, right? There was finally, they were, they were now of legal age to hire, and so we started doing so, right? Yeah. And
Wil Schroter: so this was the first time in my generation, right? I remember I had these conversations with you, where a new generation comes to work, and they brought this new concept that we had never heard of before called work-life balance. And what work-life balance means is I don't want to work as much. I've never heard someone introduce work-life balance that also includes because I want to work more, right?
Ryan Rutan: Can you lighten my life a little so I can put more weight on the work side, please?
Wil Schroter: Exactly, right. So anyway, that's here nor there. Point is, we start hiring a bunch of millennials, and by millennials, I just mean like 22 year olds at the time, OK? At the time, at the time, uh, they're in the 40s now. But at the time they'd come to work, they were fine, right? All, all good, all green light signals, but the craziest thing happened at 6 o'clock, which we are, we worked at uh 9 to 6, at 6 o'clock, everyone would pack their laptops and just all at once, and you could separate without having to say a word, who is Jed X and who is millennial, right? Because the millennials still
Ryan Rutan: sitting, you were en X if you.
Wil Schroter: No one said a word, right? Like no one had to say a thing. But, but the reason I bring this up is it was the first time that I had ever seen such a dramatic distinction between my vision of alignment and their vision of alignment, OK? And so I leaned in naturally and I asked some folks, I was like, so, you know, you're you're leaving at 6, it's like a half day. I mean, I'm, I'm kidding, but like, you know, that's that's like. Uh, and they were like, yeah, that's cause I'm an employee, you know, I, I'm not the owner. They said this in so many words, but it was the first time I'd ever heard someone verbalize that. Now I was like, huh, huh, you're not wrong.
Ryan Rutan: Yeah, you, you've got a point. I don't like that it's pointed at me, but you've got a point, right? Like I, I don't get to leave the movie halfway. I, I have to stick until the, the credits roll, right? Like, why do you get to leave?
Wil Schroter: It didn't occur to me that our incentives were different. Like, up until that point, I had never had to have that conversation and what I'm saying is just, and there's nothing wrong with what they did. My point is that they did it. And it forced me to realize that we're not in alignment. Prior to that, I'm not even kidding, for like 15 years, I would work until midnight with my entire team. And now mind you, we're all younger, but so are they, right? Like, and no one would think twice about it. There's a guy at a Santa Monica named Jason Nazar. um Jason started docstock.com and then damn I just blanked out of the second company started, I think he sold them both and uh I remember one time. I was in Santa Monica when I was living there, and uh Jason's like, hey, let's grab some dinner. We got to dinner, it's like 9 o'clock, a little bit late for dinner, and after dinner he's like, uh, uh, I gotta head back to the office. I'm like, oh, did you leave something? He's like, no, we're still working. I go just just because I had to see this and we were walking past his office I wanna go see what this looks like, right? I go in, Ryan, his entire team was there, but like no different than when I'd stopped by at like 3 in the afternoon. Right. And I'm not saying this is healthy or good.
Ryan Rutan: I'm saying
Wil Schroter: somehow he had aligned his interests in in like his interest of being a founder with their interests of, of wanting or maybe having to be there. But now I can't even fathom that. Like, I don't even pretend like those interests are aligned.
Ryan Rutan: No, I, and I think that was part of the challenge, right? is that early on, right? I used to expect my staff to have to be as all in as me and anyone around me and it was participating in anything with me. I was expected everybody else to be as in as me. I told the story once about getting dressed down by my coach after after trying to push the team too hard and and basically having me explain exactly this to me is like, look, the consequences aren't the same for everybody, not everybody wants the same things out of this that. You do, not everyone's gonna get the same things out of this that you do. Therefore, you can't expect them to put the same things into this as you do, right? So me expecting everyone to be as all in as I was wasn't fair, wasn't fair for the the the team, wasn't fair for my staff later. They didn't sign up for what I'm just gonna say my level of consequence. Correct, right, right, in either direction, right? If it goes really well, it will go better for me. If it goes really poorly, it will go. A lot more poorly for me, right? The, the way we are, it's, it's funny, you kind of think it's like a pendulum. We are way out at the very far reaches of the pendulum, so when it swings, we swing all the way. There's somewhere down near the bottom, so yeah, it goes back and forth, but it's like being on deck versus being in the crow's nest. We're in the crow's nest, right? So when the ship tilts, we go all the way, and I think that once you realize that, and you stop expecting. That alignment, it, it got a little easier. I'm, I'm not gonna say it got easy. It was still hugely frustrating for me, but it got
Wil Schroter: easier. Yeah, OK, so, so stick with that then. So I think my challenge, and I think a lot of others is, hey, we're all in this together, we're all gonna build something great, and it's like, yeah, sort of. Actually, I, I'll give you another interesting point about this concept of ownership, if you will, and I don't, I'm not talking about equity, I just mean like ownership of the of what you're building, OK, it's just like genuine passion for what it is. This concept of not my baby, and, and by the way, not my baby does not mean that I wasn't the person that started it, but what I'm saying is there are folks in like you and Gack and you know, folks like that, that have full ownership of what's here, right? Like you've been there from the start, you, you've built this thing, this thing is a part of your DNA. But it stops there too. The the other people that are in after after after don't have that like
Ryan Rutan: it's my baby
Wil Schroter: too kind of DNA. And for a long time, I just assumed if you're on payroll, you had that DNA.
Ryan Rutan: Right now, it's, it's not it, you know, it's interesting because I think that, you know, some of it is that that ownership. And there's a particular type of ownership that I'm gonna, I'm gonna call out here because I, I think that commitment gap isn't necessarily about loyalty, right? Right, yeah, I agree with that totally. It's, it's the the ownership is is about the risk. It's about who owns the risk in a lot of cases, yep, right, who actually owns the downside of this thing, because that is going to really and truly determine how committed someone is. Now, I I think you're talking about a different type of ownership which is also extremely valid, which is just how Been and built and and and been part of it and literally it's part of your DNA you're part of its DNA, right? Like you pull this out and like that's that's now it's no longer the same company. That's a different aspect, but equally as important.
Wil Schroter: Well, my frustrations have been, have been going in these conversations with an expectation that they they saw things the way I did. And again, the consequence was a big one. I give you an example, like 10 years ago, I remember you, me and a couple of other leadership were on a a chat. This was on a Saturday. And something was going wrong with something, maybe like our our ads weren't firing or something, like there's some like issue. And I remember like, like chatting with with with all of you, particularly, you know, one of the folks in the group was like, hey guys, honestly, this is like a weekend, you know, I wanna be off on the weekends, I don't wanna um do that. And my response, in so many words, but not these words, I'm just trying to like paraphrase was, if that's your response, you shouldn't be on this chat. Right, meaning like you shouldn't be in leadership. The point of leadership is that you do have to take,
Ryan Rutan: you are tied to these consequences. Yeah,
Wil Schroter: right, right,
Ryan Rutan: like you don't, you don't get this level of shit. Like it wasn't, it wasn't like we were like, hey guys, what do you think? Should we plan the Christmas party for the 15th or the 18th? It's like, hey, there's a fundamental challenge, like we're taking on water. Yeah, exactly.
Wil Schroter: You got to take on water. Yeah, and so, but again, it's back to that reframing. So now what I've come to to realize, and again this will start to, you'll start to see this theme permeate through everything we're about to talk about. What I've started to realize is I have to be super honest about what those differences are. If we can't make payroll, they will lose their job, and there's nothing, there's nothing inconsequential about that, that's meaningful, that's those are people's lives. But if I can't uh make payroll, I lose everything. I lose everybody's jobs, right? I lose my own job. I put myself into personal risk, like, you know, I can't just quit and restart. It's your point. Everyone else has some version of a life raft. I'm going down with this thing to the bottom of the ocean. So yes, I'm freaking out about it on a Saturday. There's a reason someone else isn't. I need to check myself before I have that reaction,
Ryan Rutan: for sure. And I, I think. As as time goes on, one of the things that I've realized, particularly within the, the employees, I don't need everyone to agree. I don't need everyone to have the same level of commitment or consequence. It's about them showing up, right? It's not about everyone agreeing, it's about everybody still showing up, right? It's about being there, doing the thing that I need and me being very clear on kind of what I need and letting them be very clear on what I need from them. Sure, but, but it is still frustrating, and you know it's funny, I do believe that part of this comes from a really good place, which is just like, we're seeking out that so like this desire for alignment, particularly amongst the team, forget the spouses for a minute, forget the the the people who aren't directly, directly like in this like literally turning the screws in the bolts and building a machine with us. I think part of that is this sort of like desire for camaraderie, this desire to feel like everyone cares enough to to really want to do this for all the right reasons. So again, I think I think part of this does come from a good place. This isn't me saying like, I need everyone aligned so that we can get things done and grow faster and make more money. It, yes, that is one of the byproducts, but I think for me it was just always about like. It always felt good, right? It was like, you ever pull like a study all nighter, right, where it was like, let's let's ace this exam. OK, well, that was the thing that used to happen, or just, you know, let's let's stay up until this thing ships, but like at that level where it wasn't out of some sense of obligation. It was a sense of desire and pride that happened at an individual level, but that culminated in a group of people doing something pretty awesome together. And I think that like part of me will always want to recreate that. Part of me will always want to say like, let's do stay at the office till midnight, and then I'll look at labor laws and go, yeah, let's maybe not, um, but
Wil Schroter: OK, so let's take that off the table though. Let's move up the chain. To a co-founder, OK? And here's someone, let's say you have 5050 stock, like, you know, we're taking off the, hey, you have more than I do kind of thing. And so at that point, like, well, well then we're definitely aligned, right? Uh, because we have the same amount of stock, upside downside is the same. Let's assume every dollar in dollar out is the same. And I'm like, yeah, no, you don't. On paper, those should align, but that's actually not what creates co-founder disputes more often. It's an expectation.
Ryan Rutan: Being in the same boat and looking at different maps,
Wil Schroter: yep, right, it's, it's
Ryan Rutan: like it's, it's super frustrating, right? And for both sides, clearly, right, except when just wouldn't, you know, like you and I, we're always the ones that are right about it and so then like it's, it's more frustrating for us because it was their misalignment.
Wil Schroter: I was like, OK, so here's what I would say. The thing that I've seen the most. Is an expectation of contribution. Ryan, you, you and I are 50/50 co-founders on something, and we both have an expectation about how contribution is going to work. And here's a couple places that backfires and and using you and I as a metaphor for like every co-founder. The first place that backfires is number one, everyone thinks they work harder than they do. We did a whole episode about this, right? You know, talking about like people's perception of how hard they work. So like, I come home to my spouse and I'm like. Oh my God, what a long day. And my spouse just assumes that must mean that I've done all this effort, right? But I could have worked for two freaking hours, but I could, I could have professionally complained about it when I come home, right? Or in my mind, I worked really hard. I mean, Ryan, you and I both dealt with this. In fact, I think we've done podcasts about this. I've had days where I felt like I've just gone through a slog all day and have nothing to show for it, nothing to show for it. Some people, that's their career. They're busy being busy. And in their mind, like, I worked hard, but you didn't get anything done, right? Like, yes, you spent time in a place that doesn't mean you had output.
Ryan Rutan: It's gotta come down to to transformation, right? Something has to have changed based on what you did and hopefully positive transformation, not just something
Wil Schroter: changed. Ryan, you ever play a soccer game where you worked really hard but you didn't score any points?
Ryan Rutan: Uh yeah, most of them. And I'm not the goalie,
Wil Schroter: yeah, yeah, I was gonna say. But, but, you know, same thing. And so my point is, that's usually where it starts, this, this misalignment, is that our expectations about our output and someone else's output don't align. So it's like I'm doing everything right and they're fucking everything up. OK, so, so that's one part. But another part, I'm just gonna give you the two categories let's kind of, you know, build into a little bit. But the other part is, uh, an expectation on how this company should be run, and that that has so many tentacles. That's everything from how our culture should be to whether we take on money, to whether do we. out cash now, or do we reinvest it for the future, or to what our product's going to be, you know, you name it, right? And those expectations can become so dissimilar that our alignment is damn near impossible, even though on paper we should be on the same side of the table.
Ryan Rutan: I think that's the the bigger one for me because I really do feel like when when the friction isn't about effort, meaning like what are what are our actual daily contributions, because to your point, everybody's gonna have a different view on that anyways, right? Like the way I feel about what I did today may or may not be accurate. So, the way you feel about what I did today, probably even less accurate, right? It's third party. So it's like, it's super tough, but when, when the friction isn't about effort, when it becomes about direction, right? The fundamentals of how we're running the business, who we're running it with, who are our clients gonna be, who our staff gonna be, all of these little things that that are so, so involved in whether the company works or not or how well it works or how well we enjoy how it's working. That was what I meant before when I said same boat, different maps, right? Even if we're putting in the same amount of effort, let's say we do get that to parity, like, just every day somehow magically we hit exactly the same level of of effort. We're both rowing exactly the same speed. Turns out we're rowing in different direction, we're going nowhere. To me, that's the most critical misalignment between between co-founders, and I think it's the harder one to diagnose. Because what people will tend to look at is the other person's output, and they'll go with it's either working or not. What they don't look at in most cases is, is that working towards the thing I am working towards as well? Like, are we even pointed in the same direction? If I can quantify their effort, and that's all I looked at, like, good, Will went 60 miles an hour, I went 60 miles an hour. Too damn bad. We went opposite directions, right? That's not good, but I think that's the part people fail to look at, right? That's the. people fail to analyze. You know,
Wil Schroter: something that's really funny about everything we talk about here is that none of it is new. Everything you're dealing with right now has been done 1000 times before you, which means the answer already exists, you may just not know it, but that's OK. That's kind of what we're here to do. We talk about this stuff on the show, but we actually solve these problems all day. at groups.startups.com. So if any of this sounds familiar, stop guessing about what to do. Let us just give you the answers to the test and be done with it. OK, so when we think about that, and we're like, hey, shit, I, I really don't have the same type of alignment as my co-founder. Again, I think this is, this is the recurring theme I was talking about. The first thing is to recognize that. Right? To be able to say, I wanna be on the same page, of course I want a page, but I'm not, right? Like, I don't believe they work hard, or I don't believe that we should raise VC or I don't believe this product is, you know, ever going to work. Like, you have to be really honest about the fact that you are not on board with alignment before you try to force this alignment. I see this, you know, and we'll get to to to couples and relationships in a second, but like. I see this in relationships all the time, where you got uh two people like somebody and their spouse, and they can't reconcile because at the end of the day they just don't agree, right? And they're like, you know, we want to have a happy relationship, marriage, whatever it is, and I'm like, you're not going to, you fundamentally don't agree. Like your, your foundation is broken, and that's what we're talking about here with co-founders, which, you know, the, the mirror between co-founders and spouses is so freaking tight, cause it, you know, it it is that kind of symbiotic relationship. And I think it's hard to get right.
Ryan Rutan: The person you spend the other part of your waking hours with, right? Yeah,
Wil Schroter: exactly, yeah, it's your daytimes,
Ryan Rutan: you know, I think one of the challenges, I'm gonna go back to what I said, you know, the top of the episode, which is so many of these things come from the early days and just get perpetuate now. This one's a bit different because it's, it's an inverse curve. I think at the beginning, co-founder alignment is actually very Good, because there's damn near nothing to to miss a line on, right? You're like, do you think this is a crazy idea that has almost no chances of succeeding and we should just try it? Yeah, right. That's all there was to think about, right? There's nothing there yet. And I think that that's one of the, the big challenges with this is that founders miss the opportunities or don't take the opportunities to reassess that on an ongoing basis. I mean talk about something that needs real-time monitoring. It is co-founder alignment because it's something that by just nature of how it started to builds, it erodes or grows further apart as time passes by virtue of growing the business. So in in some ways, your success is what will drive you apart. I don't mean that that like success necessarily has to, but just by getting bigger and having more dynamism in the startup, you are inherently driving more variability, more opportunities for us to be misaligned and go different directions. Do you ever see this get caught in time? I'm trying to think of like, have I seen like founders catch this in time. I feel like there's like two types of founders. The ones that are like, they were just measuring it and they're constantly talking and doing it, and there's the ones that get to like the cataclysm, and they're like, holy shit, I don't even recognize you anymore, let's try to figure this out.
Wil Schroter: I think everybody waits till it's too late because no one, this is the whole point of this this episode is no one anticipates why it would be a problem. To begin with, again, go in this with the, oh, you know, we're fifty-fifty partners, so I guess everything is settled like that's the least of your concerns. Best case that's, you know, that's settled. uh worst cases even that's a problem. But you know, as we're talking about this, as we're talking about relationships, let's take this over to spouses because I think we're gonna see a lot of parallels here. But what I would say, and we said this at the top of the episode, spouses are like the co-founders no one talks about. For every founder, there is someone at home, and, and we say spouse, it could be, you know, whatever your version at home is. Your, your emotional support that isn't your direct co-worker type thing, right? But let's just use spouses here for a second. One of the things that that we don't consider when we go into this, is whether or not our spouses are really on board with this, and I'll give you a very common example. Common example is I'll use my own wife. Sarah just cares about two things, safety and security, which are kind of the same thing, right? She does not want to rock the boat. Her answer to everything is, what's the safest answer? And and that's already my answer before you even giving me my options. Now, the irony here that she married a guy who has done nothing but roll the dice his entire life. Yeah, exactly, it's unbelievable. And when she, you know, when we met each other, when we got married, I was already like 10 years in my career as an entrepreneur, and I was all in entrepreneurs. Clearly I was never gonna have a day job, so to speak. So she knew what she was signing up for, but it hasn't changed her approach. She's not like, well, you know, we've been married 14 years. Like, it's not like Sarah now is like, oh well, you know, screw it, let's roll the dice. You know, her answer is no different now than it was 14 years ago the day we got married. When you look at this with Nargis, as she considers how dynamic what you do is and always have been, how does she relate to it? Are you guys aligned on start?
Ryan Rutan: We're aligned in the. This is what we're doing. Are we aligned in terms of of how we we tolerate the pain of it? Absolutely not, right? Like it's, it's easy when it's working well, right? It always is. I was just gonna say the same I think, right? I, I think that's, I think that's an important thing to think about and this this goes for co-founders, this goes for for spouses, your, your person, whoever that is, whatever that might be. With co-founders we're, we're dividing equity, with spouses we're we're not necessarily, I mean, in under certain legal circumstances, sure, you're also dividing your equity with them, but you are dividing pain. Yeah, the tolerance of pain when things aren't going well, right? So when it's going great, yeah, who cares it's easy to share the good times. When we're in the other 95% of running a startup, it's not just about dividing the pain, it's about the fact that even if we were to divide the pain equally, pain tolerance isn't equal, right? Rarely are we, are we able to tolerate the pain in the same ways. And I think that that's one of the the things that we see. I think that even the degree that my wife and I are aligned, Nargis's tolerance for pain around a specific kind of way, anything that's a threat to stability, so very much like, that's a threat to stability, uh, safety and security for our family is going to have very little tolerance. Right, that gets a yelp really quick. This is from a woman who did 3 natural childbirths, so she doesn't, she doesn't yelp easy, right? So like, she can tolerate some pain, but there are particular types of pain that she is extremely susceptible to, and that's, and that's one of them. I think that was one of the things that I, I started to realize is like to me, this startup is so closely tied to my identity. And, and to her it's not, right? It, it's just an existential threat to stability in a lot of ways. Now it also, it also does provide, it also does a lot of other things. It it does, it does some wonderful things too, but I think that there is always this sense that it is very much a sword that that that cuts both ways and that there's a very, very strong fear around it cutting that direction.
Wil Schroter: One of the things that's been really successful for me with my wife has been repeating out loud what our differences are. OK, and let me explain, and not to be confrontational, to be reassuring. So when we're doing something, and I'm always, you know, you've been in this adventure for me for a long time, I'm always doing something freaking weird. When I tell her about it,
Ryan Rutan: inaccurate.
Wil Schroter: Yeah, when I tell her about it, she's like, huh, well that's an idea.
Ryan Rutan: That's that's, you had a thought,
Wil Schroter: it's something you could do, right? Please don't tell me you've already done it, and so,
Ryan Rutan: yeah.
Wil Schroter: But, but did
Ryan Rutan: you say theoretically? Yeah, exactly,
Wil Schroter: exactly. So here's what I always open up with. I always say, look, while we have shared goals, uh, in life, you know, as a family, I understand that some of these goals are just my goals. You mentioned a second ago. You talked about kind of like your ownership and the and the outcome, your identity. Those are things that are important to you and I, but they don't necessarily matter to our wives, right? He's an example. Ryan, if you and I service. A million founders or 10 million founders, we're gonna have some sort of reaction to it, OK? Like there's some it's gonna spark something inside us, everything from pride to reassurance to, uh, you name it, right? Like all these, these good emotions. My wife doesn't give a shit, nor should she, by the way, right? She wouldn't even
Ryan Rutan: need it's the same, oh wow, whether it's 10, 100, a billion,
Wil Schroter: no context for it, and again, nor should she. But this is my point. Why would you? Whenever we go down one of these paths, when we're having these discussions, I always like kind of zoom out, and I say, look, I understand that that my goals and my aspirations are different than yours. Now, hopefully, the results of my aspirations help with your aspirations, right? But but but but they're not the same. So it's not fair for me to say, for me to say, well, why don't you just back me up? Because our goals aren't the same, right? Like I'm trying to do dumb shit in hopes that it will make money, you know, which will help our family. But there's a lot of ways to make money that are a lot more safe than than what I'm gonna go do, and I'm choosing not to do them. So by default, we're not aligned. And when she hears that, it doesn't mean she instantly agrees with me, but I think it goes for miles to hear that someone understands why you're not aligned.
Ryan Rutan: As we're saying this now, I'm wondering if the, I mean, clearly we sort of said that like hoping for alignment might be part of the problem in the beginning, because when we start to talk about misalignment, I'm not even sure that's fair, right? Cause we aren't necessarily misaligned. Misaligned suggests that we were supposed to be on the exact same axis. Yeah, right, and it somehow we veered off. The word that's springing to mind now for me is asymmetry. Asymmetry acknowledges that we're operating on different planes entirely, right? Like where you and I are operating versus where our spouses are operating, right, where there are some common goals, we are doing things on entirely different planes, different vectors, right, again, maybe a shared outcome, keep family alive. The way you and I are doing that and the way they're doing that, completely different things. It's different stakes, different consequences, different time horizons too, right? Because there are decisions you and I are making that have like these in our own minds, these far reaching consequences like I'm gonna start doing this thing now that maybe will pay off long time down the road and they're like, how do we manage, you know, children today, how do we manage the safety of the family today? Oh, they're also thinking long term as well. I also think the other problem with with misalignment just as a concept, now that I'm thinking through it, is that Somehow it implies it can be fixed with better communication or realignment, whereas asymmetry says this is structural. This is literally how this thing was built, and it's gonna stay this way. All we can do is sort of acknowledge, right? I think to your point, let's just acknowledge, let's just acknowledge the fact that we are dealing with an asymmetric situation or a misalignment and I think that's about as close as we can get, isn't it?
Wil Schroter: Right now, at this stage in our life, me being in in my now early 50s and and and and you around the corner to them. Coming right up, you know we are at a stage in life where all of our peer groups are roughly at the same age and I and I know this applies to folks listening, so I'm gonna be sensitive when I say this. This is that era where everybody starts to second guess their marriages. Right, just, just fundamentally, uh, the kids are a certain age, the marriages of a certain age where everyone's like, shit, is this it? And I have conversations with all my friends around this, and, and right, I, I've got a massive friend group, or a massive friend group. I know you have a huge friend group too, and I gotta tell you, all the couples that Sarah and I know, and then we're talking hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of couples, we can't name three that are happy, that are that are align, right? That's that's fucked up, OK. However, however, It also goes to point to how hard this is. Right, I, I think in the early days we go into this being like, well, I wanna be rich, you wanna be rich, you know, blah blah, like we're aligned, right? Like as if that's, that's the end of it,
Ryan Rutan: right? Again, man, but it look, think about it though, like just from a, just go to a pure mathematical state, right? At the origin point, everything's aligned. It's the second you start to move further that that's when the lines it can't diverge so that when we're at zero, everyone's aligned, right? It's easy. It's, it's, of course
Wil Schroter: we are. When I was a little kid. I, I would, uh, walk up to a little kid, doesn't matter where we were, and I'm like, I like Mike Tyson's punch out. He's like, I like Mike Tyson's punch out. Let's be best friends. Let's be best friends. Was it?
Ryan Rutan: Was there another way to meet children between 1986 and 1990?
Wil Schroter: No, and then and just like I didn't use one. I watch it with my son now. It's the exact same thing, right? He's, he's like, I like Fortnite, the other kids like, I like Fortnite, we're best friends, right? Yeah. So the point is, to your point, we get this origin, we're both on the same page, but we haven't introduced any of the other factors. But I think what happens is because we fail to realize those really important nuances. We don't acknowledge them, which I think is important for all these categories we're talking about. I think acknowledging it is by far the biggest part. And I would say one part of that is acknowledging it to yourself and being being OK, like because a lot of people like, oh, well, that person doesn't work as hard as I do, so fuck them. Like, no, dude, like that that's the broken premise that like that's why you're never going to make this work, right? The second part about it is communicating that acknowledgement to them. Hey, I understand why you don't work on Saturday. Honestly, I have to do it because my consequences are higher. You don't. But if you would, you'd be doing me a huge favor. That is way different than why aren't you working on Saturday? You create the acknowledgement. Same thing with my wife. Hey, I think we should go risk our personal money as a family on investing in this initiative, but I know that there's a lot of places we could put that money. This is probably a riskier one that I feel good about that makes no sense to you. So I'll understand if you're hesitant, it's not an affront to me. It's because your risk tolerance, your needs, your outcomes are different than mine. So there's no version where I can come to you and say, what's wrong with you? I, I should already know that going in if I've got like, you know, any level of empathy. Yeah,
Ryan Rutan: you know, it's, it's interesting cause I think sometimes there truly are times where we're just looking at the same problem differently. But I feel like with this malalignment or this asymmetry, that it's not just that we're looking at the same problem differently, we're we're actually looking at different problems, right? We have the same circumstances, but we're actually looking at different problems, meaning that the the outcome that they're most concerned about on the other side of this thing. is different than than what we're looking at, right? So, the problem being a conduit to whatever that transformation of the future looks like, that's where the the difference is, and I think that's for me it was a hard recognition to have, like I had all of a sudden understand acknowledge that it's like there are times where when Co-founders, employees, staff, friends, wife, children, it wasn't that we were looking at the problem differently. It was that we were literally looking at different problems, like we were just fundamentally wanting to go and do different things from this new origin point the problem is now all of a sudden we're we're diverging there. That's something you just kind of have to respect. There's not much way around that, right, sort of trying to just literally realign people to make them you which.
Wil Schroter: Well, OK, that's what I'm saying, right? Like I, I went through I probably the first decade of my of my career frustrated that everyone wasn't on my plan, and, and so I kept trying to like force feed all of these people into, into my version of how I thought things should go, and then being continually frustrated every single time that they weren't going my way. And that's not the same as saying, well then I just defer to everybody every time. That's that's not the same thing. But if you were to say, hey, my way or the highway, that ends poorly. Yes, you can force enough things, but eventually that will break. For
Ryan Rutan: sure. Yeah, cause if you manufacture alignments, you somehow cobble it together, right, it's gonna bend back out of shape, right? The type of alignment will fade, uh, the thing I like empathy lasts, we know this. So if you can't always share the same goals. At least share the understanding, right, of those differences. Then I think you, you've got, you got something you can build from at that point.
Wil Schroter: I always say you cannot change people, you can only change your understanding of people. And so I'm not gonna change my wife to be this risk taking maverick, right? This is not going to happen, right? And by the way, who the hell am I to even suggest that she should change?
Ryan Rutan: Right, right that that would. I could actually go perfectly horribly for, right, for all we know,
Wil Schroter: my only control though, but I can change my understanding by saying, hey, this is what makes my wife tick. These are the things that concern her. These are the things that excite her, right? Like, and understand that that when I bring to the table shit that concerns her, I shouldn't expect a high five answer, right? I should expect a pushback because that's who she is. Conversely, When she has a conversation with me, she should know that my answer is gonna be, fuck it, risk it all. Like, let's see what happens, right? Let's see what happens, right, let's see what happens because I'm OK with that, because I, I'm OK with what happens on the other side of I'll see what happens cause I always figure it out. But again, I think what's killed me for a long time, I get it now, which is why we're talking about this now. What killed me for a long time was one, not acknowledging myself, and the second, I wasn't good. I am now. I wasn't good at saying I understand where you're coming from. Uh-huh, I understand why what I'm asking is antithetical to how you're built, and I recognize that. I would say my batting average for people giving me the same consideration is almost 0. Yeah, I see it work the other way, the other way too well. I haven't had an employee come to me and say, you know, well, I understand that your consequences are pretty significant, and mine really aren't that high, so I'm gonna work a little bit harder just to help you out. I've pretty much heard that now.
Ryan Rutan: Yeah, I don't think I've heard that one. I don't think I've heard that. No, but look, that goes back to understanding and acknowledging, respecting that difference. There's there's a reason they're not saying that to you, right? Yeah, there's, there's a fundamental, there's not a reason for them to say that to you, I
Wil Schroter: guess
Ryan Rutan: it's a different
Wil Schroter: way to put it, to put it. And so
Ryan Rutan: I think that, yeah, good. I was
Wil Schroter: gonna say, so like, you know, I used to think that like with alignment, it was, I just needed to convince everyone. That my way was the way to go, and not not like like a jerk about it, but just like I, I thought, I thought that was my job, was to convince like the team that this was, you know, the future path to work really hard, all these things, and I realized just a little bit of it is, but like 10%, right? Like, enough to say, hey, just by the way, here's the direction I'd like to go. The other 90% are like making them do it because I wanted them to, didn't never went well, like
Ryan Rutan: it. No. I think we have to stop. You just have to at some point you just have to stop trying to erase or correct the misalignment. I think now asymmetry is literally architected into a founder's life. Like what we are trying to do by its nature is asymmetric, right? We're trying to take something and it's nothing and make it into something huge, right? Asymmetry at its at its its best, right? We're gonna absolutely try to to scale something. I think the real trick is not. Letting it break relationships as we go, because I think that perfect alignment is, is, it's, it's a myth, right? I don't think it's something we even can force function, even if we try really hard, we'll break ourselves doing it. mutual respect, like, that's always in style, right? That's how you keep building um to the point where you maybe you do reach alignment, because again, it's really easy to be aligned in the good times, right? Right, you
Wil Schroter: get there. No one's ever had a A huge problem because we're making so much money and we just don't know where to put it, right? And if you do
Ryan Rutan: in the brown bags, no in the green bags,
Wil Schroter: you know, it's so funny, just reminds me of the dumbest story. Ponzi, I can't remember the guy's first name, but like Jeffrey or something like that. Ponzi actually had this problem, you know, the Ponzi scheme comes from a guy named Lai Ponzi and and as the myth goes, there was a time that Ponzi was making so much money. That his issue was he couldn't figure out where to put it because he couldn't put it in a bank. So he was like stacking it in apartments or something like that,
Ryan Rutan: like, yeah, being eaten by rats and all that, yeah, yeah,
Wil Schroter: yeah, yeah, oh yeah, that was, um,
Ryan Rutan: I suppose in extreme cases it could also cause fighting, but I guess the point, you have so much money, you don't know where to put it and the rats are eating it, you're probably not fighting about money you're gonna be OK.
Wil Schroter: You're gonna be OK. So, so here here's what I'd say, like, for all of us that that are trying to like fight this battle, the way to win this battle is to fight it less. The way to win this battle is to zoom out and say, here are the things that I can control, way less than any of us think, think it is. And here's the things I can't control. The reality is you can control your own perception, you can't control other people. So if we want alignment, alignment has to come. From our understanding of what can be controlled in by way of that, what can be compromised, and what can't. And the sooner we get to that point, the sooner we kind of like take our hands off the wheel for a second, it's like, you know what, I'm not gonna get everything I want out of everyone, so I want to get as much as I can out of everyone. That will be the only thing that we'll ever get, that will get even close to a perfect alignment.
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