#19 – Minimalism – More of what you love

Transcript

[00:00:00] All right. Good day to you. This is the Becoming Great podcast, a podcast where we explore topics like personal development and business.

[00:00:13] And we are becoming great ourselves. And in the meantime, we are building the organization, Great Dot.com, a company that will give away 100 percent of its profits to charity.

[00:00:26] And today, I’m here with, as usual, the founder of Great, my good buddy, the aspiring Thai boxer, the professional dancer who thinks Eric Berger. How are you? Thank you.

[00:00:42] Far too kind. Actually, not, I should say, nice things about me. Mm hmm. You know, it’s time with nice things to say about Eric again. We’ll just make this up to the agenda. And I’m here with my good friend Emil Equador, who is simply not such a good friend because he didn’t say nice things about me. But he’s really smart, but like evil genius smart. You know, he wants to destroy the world, wants to blow things up. And it’s not actually nice on the inside.

[00:01:13] I should Keneally’s there turned down a huge apartment building right next to me with one of these big bulldozer things where there’s not a metal ball on it, but it could have. Could have been. And I always wanted to drive one of those things.

[00:01:28] So you want to destroy things? That’s what I’ve been seeing on your inside.

[00:01:32] I do. And one other thing you need to know about me is that I am a minimalist, which means that my life is pretty special, I guess, compared to a lot of other people. It means that I’m waking up at the same time every day, always 6:00 in the morning and I don’t use an alarm clock. I have one bowl in my kitchen and I use this for cereal. Except for when I make my coffee and I make it, you know, classic Brewsters where I just pour the water on the coffee myself. I have one spoon. One fork. I have one knife. And I sit on the floor.

[00:02:18] Because why would you need furniture and.

[00:02:24] That’s not really me.

[00:02:26] And you can if you look at the video, you can see all the books behind it. I did see this due to video and this year that you’re sitting in Dallas.

[00:02:35] I hope you listen to this online on all the I mean, well, I saw this in a YouTube video and the guy made pretty much the same joke that I tried to do right now. But afterwards he showed but I wrote a life of a minimalist really could look like. And then it turned out that it is actually not that different from the life that I live. And where he explained it is that it’s about choosing to say no to thoughts, behavior and relationships. That doesn’t really add the most that they could do to your well-being. And I thought that was interesting.

[00:03:17] So, Eric, can you relate to this? And what is minimalism? What do you think of when you think of minimalism?

[00:03:29] So we explored this together yesterday when we brought this topic up. And the first thing I see when I hear the word minimalism is this white poster, just a white background and the black letters, minimalism in Ariel like really big letters and adopt DOT. Yeah. That’s like the first thing I see. The second thing is like a very clean living room in some magazine where very small pieces of furniture like Scandinavian design or something like that. And that was my only relationship to the word minimalism. Till you start exploring it like this. Sexually, an interesting concept. Like saying no to things and. What that means and the importance of it, and I think it’s after after contemplating a bit and thinking about the topic, while this is something that benefits everyone. It’s something worth thinking about in my life, in your life, but also in how we build a business of great things. How can we explore this this concept? Together then I like what you said before, saying no to things, because I heard the expression quite a few times that when you say yes to something, you say no to something else. And I haven’t really thought about it that much. What I say. Basically, let’s say you you really want two things. You’re you’re having lunch and you really want the burger, but you also really want the pizza, obviously. And it’s tricky to make up your mind. But then at the end of it, you say yes to the burger, which actually means that you’re saying no to the pizza.

[00:05:17] So the yes is actually a no to something else. And this goes for everything in life. So if you you really want to become a fireman, but you also really want to be a lawyer. Then you can only say yes to one of these things and you will automatically say no to something else. And it’s one thing when you do this with things you really want to do, but it’s quite often that we say yes to something that we might not really want to do. And we end up having to say no to something that we wanted to do more because we’re what, as promised, our time somewhere else, or we might not even get the option of saying yes to something else because that didn’t happen. So maybe we started studying right after school. We suggested that. But that actually meant that we didn’t start a company because we didn’t even came across the person who wanted to be an entrepreneur and teach us because we were in school. So the concept then of whatever you say yes to means that you’re saying no to a lot of things that you don’t you’re not even aware of. And I think that was was a very interesting way when when I started contemplating. What does does this mean that did that make sense? I haven’t tried to explain it like this before.

[00:06:31] Yeah, I think it makes sense, and I I guess the idea is that it’s beneficial to think of the consequences of agreeing to do something. So meaning if I agree to go and meet a friend, that just feels like something I do. But it also means I’m saying no to other things I could do with that time. Yeah. We’re fighting the fire. Scroll on social media for an hour. That seems like it’s just something that I do. But I’m also saying no to all of these things. It’s just that it’s a passive. No, passive.

[00:07:07] No, that’s a good word. I thought. Yeah. You’re saying no without being. Being aware of it. And that goes for foreverything and. I read this book like two years ago called Essentialism by someone named something that’s funny.

[00:07:26] I love this guy. He’s so cool. Someone named something. Yeah. Gregor McEwen, Greg McKew’s. I something way out there.

[00:07:37] And he called this essentialism. And I guess that’s kind of what we’re going for with minimalism here. And he mentioned a rule called the 90 points rule. And I think that’s a very good way of playing this. And his logic was, if you keep saying yes to things that you’re not super excited about, then you’re never gonna get to do anything you’re super excited about because there are so many things that you’re gonna be kind of excited about that it will fill up all your time in your schedule.

[00:08:09] So if you’re instead asking yourself, whatever your decision, what do I want to do and say, OK, on a scale from 1 to 100, how excited I am about this, how much do I want to do this? And if it’s below 90, then he says that you should say no, because there will be so many things that are 50 1. It might make sense to say yes to something that’s 51, but there’s so many things that like that you will end up doing just things that are slightly exciting. And then you will never come across these super exciting things. And it’s it’s also a good way of dealing. Am I doing this for me? Am I doing this for for someone else? So I could see. This makes sense. Is this like you love to feel beneficial?

[00:08:57] It makes sense. And one thing that I like about that’s true is that if you only choose to do things that you really, really want to do, but are mine or more exciting for you, that means that you’re going to have fewer options. And I think that could be so. I also thought of minimalism as I also thought of minimalism as having very few belongings, having very little furniture. But it could also be limiting yourself to just a few choices. And I remember reading somewhere that if you go back to hamburger and pizza analogy again, that if you’re in a restaurant and you could only choose between hamburger and pizza, then what whichever one you choose, you’re going to be more satisfied with your choice compared to if you have 10 things in the menu. So less choice equals more more happiness, whichever choice you pick. And that’s interesting. If you go to vacation, you can only go to Dubai, for example, but you’re gonna enjoy defecation more compared to if you could choose from 10 different places knowing you say it.

[00:10:10] I remember I’ve read something like this about when I was reading about the success of Apple. Like one of the arguments that he made in that article was the reason why everyone has the iPhone or so many people had the iPhone is that there were only one iPhone. So you could go in and say, I want the iPhone, but if you want that son some. So it was common that you walked into the store like, okay, I want to buy this Android phone. And there were a hundred different options. Yeah. And people just got overwhelmed. I can’t make up my mind. And then they went and got the iPhone.

[00:10:43] That is the annoying thing about Android. There are so many phones in there, too many options.

[00:10:48] And ironically, people are less satisfied with, you know, and even if you pick the best Android option, you’re going to be less satisfied with that choice because they have more options.

[00:10:57] Yeah, that reminds me of another similar thing and which I haven’t put these two together before. But there is a TED talk could talk called the paradox of Choice. And they’re elaborating on this specific thing where they’re they’re saying the more choices you have, the less happy you will be, basically. But it’s a it’s a really good TEDTalk and we’ll link to it below. But yet, regardless, let’s get back to this this 90 percent rule. And because I mean, me and my fiancee, Johanna, we use this is a lot together when we’re trying to decide on things to do or not to do. And one thing came to mind that we did quite recently, we were supposed to go to England and we had actually already bought the plane tickets. We had planned everything. And we were we were going. But when we got to the point where we were about to go, the trip, we’re like, do we really want to do this? It’s like, yeah, of course, we already bought the tickets. We already planned for this. Yeah, but are we genuinely excited about this trip or are we more excited about being home? It’s like, yeah, that’s true. Like, okay. So I asked who is on a scale from 1 to hundred? How excited are you about this? She’s like 60, maybe 70 and like. And how excited are you to be home and do this and this thing that we’re planning for? I mean. Yeah, that’s more. So we decided not to go on this trip because he got so easy to see. We’re actually not that excited, but just because we bought the tickets is very common that we would have gone anyway. These were Ryanair flights for like 50 years ahead. It wasn’t even a lot of money either. But yes, that we had made up her mind and planned to do it. But seeing this in a specific number like this is only 60 percent exciting. Made it a lot easier not to do it.

[00:12:46] Mm hmm. So you tapped into your true feelings instead of doing what’s expected of you? Yeah. And I’ve got another set for me.

[00:12:56] At least it made it easier to tap into my. It’s one thing to say it doesn’t feel quite right. It doesn’t feel perfect. But my name, my mind is very number oriented. So if I can say, yeah, but this is only 60, I’ve already made up my mind. I’m not doing things that they’re not 90 or more.

[00:13:13] Actually told I was with someone the other day and I told her I’m I’m 90 percent excited about doing this thing. I’m 90 percent excited right now.

[00:13:24] She’s like, you’re so stip, whose sister who is using a Marlboro? And I said, I could have said, I’m very excited. But on a scale of 1 to 100, how much is very exciting. I’m excited for you.

[00:13:36] Your it’s. I don’t know. I just I don’t know.

[00:13:42] 60 and I’ll ask this questions to many people. And I’ve gotten everything between 60 and 95.

[00:13:49] Somewhere it’s a very red flag. I’m quite happy. I hope this time these words just creates a illusion that we know what we mean, but we don’t.

[00:14:02] So we’re being minimalistic and stop using words and start using numbers instead.

[00:14:07] Numbers are awesome.

[00:14:08] I love numbers, but 8, 5, 5, 5, 3, 5, 5. Trying to do a podcast with just numbers. Does it work?

[00:14:15] It could work in some circles. I’m sure there is one out there. But if you’re only doing things that you’re excited about, nine out of 10. What if you have to pay your bills? So go to the dentist or do something really shitty or you’re gonna end up never doing those boring things?

[00:14:32] Yeah, of course it’s gonna give me a great life. Given our key here you’re in a current market here is not. It’s actually not.

[00:14:40] Am I want 100 excited? Is it one to one hundred meaningful? Is this something that really makes sense for me to do? Because maybe you’re not super excited to go see your grandmother or whatever it is, but it feels more than 90 percent meaningful to go there and be there for her. Or maybe you are not more than 90 percent excited about cleaning bears. Yeah, but this looks like a place where pigs live. So it’s more than 90 percent meaningful to do it, right? So meaningful is probably a better word for it, but neither was a better thing since then. If we really wanted to go to this trip, let’s say there were things that were felt really important to do there. People we have really, really promised or whatever it might be. Then it might still have been over 90 percent meaningful.

[00:15:26] Got it.

[00:15:28] I guess the sweet spot for me when I make a decision is the intersection between excitement and if something is healthy for me.

[00:15:36] I think that’s a that’s a good switch. But is this exciting and exciting? I have built in meaning as well. And is it healthy? If it is, I do it.

[00:15:45] Then you just go for it. Regardless, health care, it is not always.

[00:15:49] Sometimes I get them to be the president.

[00:15:55] Yeah. Worth mentioning a little side note, though, that emulates the kind of guy that looks up to girls on the subway and start talking to them even though he’s horrified.

[00:16:03] And I think he’s cray cray, but he’s also brave and brave. So. Yeah, what’s what’s minimalism to you then outside of this ninety point rule, that is how it works in my head. What? What do you think when you see this? Cool.

[00:16:20] I would like to share my introduction to minimalism, but I didn’t know was minimalism until yesterday when you and I talked about this. And that is the first book that I read that I found very, very, very meaningful for me.

[00:16:36] And this is the kind of book I think you can either be ready for it and it will give you a lot of benefit or you won’t be ready for it or you won’t be in a place in your life where you need it. And then it would be completely useless. And we are both readers. Miller.

[00:16:52] Side note, it was completely useless for me the first time I read it.

[00:16:56] And it’s still, you know, it’s meaningful but too heavy to read, right?

[00:17:04] Right. This book is written by a guy called Eckhart Toler. So he’s a tiny German guy and he’s a spiritual teacher. And what is teaching is all about the ego and how the ego works. And I read this book when I was about 24.

[00:17:21] When you say ego, what do you mean?

[00:17:23] Ego? OK. So it’s the voice in your head that is always thinking about the future or the past or that is complaining or that is reducing repetitive thoughts.

[00:17:42] Does that make sense?

[00:17:45] Well, as much sense as it can make, I think it’s a tricky concept, but yet so basically the voice that I’m thinking about as my thoughts. So my thought space.

[00:17:56] I think your thoughts can come from the true core of who you are as well.

[00:18:02] This gets a little bit spiritual, but I think there is a pure version of you. And then there is a version of you that have been conditioned by the past that might be stressed. Basically, you know, we are having a pretty shit a day that could be the voice of the ego in your head. My favorite definition of ego, and this is for the common sir of these topics is a key parts of ego.

[00:18:31] The nerds of these topics is the ego is the imagined voice of an overstimulated, nervous system.

[00:18:40] Yeah, you lost me. That flew straight over my head. It was meant. But maybe someone listening to you just wanted to show off. Yes. OK. We sidetracked a bit here. Keep going with a call.

[00:18:52] So this is a book about spirituality and you don’t need to be spiritual to read it. It just basically walks through you in each chapter.

[00:18:59] How the ego works, how the mind works, and how it might not always be beneficial for you. And when I read this, I had never gotten in contact with anything like this before. And I realized that something absurd, like 95 percent of my thoughts that I had in my head were either repetitive, just repeating unnecessary things that weren’t helping me. There were thoughts about the future or the past. And there is a point to planning and reminiscing. Of course. But when it’s happening all the time in a repetitive, unproductive way, that can be very detrimental, I think. And realizing this, realizing that, huh? There are like 3 percent of my thoughts. That is actually useful here. What would happen if I started to remove some of the thoughts that weren’t? What would happen then?

[00:20:00] What kind of thoughts for that? What what what repetitive thoughts did you have that weren’t beneficial? Okay. That would be something like I’m worrying that this thing is gonna happen.

[00:20:15] I didn’t like that this thing happened before. I don’t like this person. I don’t like this thing. If this thing happened, I would be happier.

[00:20:30] Yeah, I can definitely relate to those, especially the last thing. Yeah, if only. And then.

[00:20:35] So basically it was your fault only. I don’t like this. I liked it. That’s gratitude. That’s OK.

[00:20:46] Ok. So basically, let’s take the thought of if only this happened, I would feel better. And then just by thinking that it makes me feel worse. In a sense, because I’m obviously I’m feeling the lack of what I don’t have.

[00:21:02] Yes. And you are holding your happiness hostage to some imagined place in the future where you or your ego imagine that better circumstances will finally give you the well-being that you desire.

[00:21:18] That was a complicated sentence as well. I liked the hostage part. I’m not holding your happiness hostage. That’s is kind of I can’t see a picture in my head of my happiness sitting in a little cage somewhere on a deserted island just waiting for me to show up to this Paradise Island and releasing the happiness. Yeah, as long as my thoughts are like not my happiness, which, by the way, looks like a little sunny cloud.

[00:21:44] Imagine the cloud, but it’s the sun, huh? That’s the way the happiness looks in my my head. Apparently it’s got a smiley face and a tooth.

[00:21:53] Oh, yeah.

[00:21:54] And the truth, the truth. That ego place is that if I only can get to this paradise island with the coconuts and the Hawaiian bikini girls waving a palm tree over you. Then I will mention those. Then all of a sudden, I would feel much better not realizing that when you get there, your ego will still have 97 percent unnecessary thoughts. Why is the sand so hot? When do I get home? I want to work.

[00:22:18] Why? This is boring. I wish there was more bikini girls here. So it’s. It’s the condition, right? And something inside me when I read the book said imagine if these thoughts aren’t here. And in the beginning, I started hating myself and had these thoughts. It became a very non nice way of dealing with it, but I think over time. I learned using things like meditation and practicing, letting thoughts go that wasn’t serving me.

[00:22:53] I started to have less of those thoughts and that in my experience created space and in the space which meaning it’s not field of unnecessary things. More and more of these nice sorts. These creative thoughts could come up. So being minimalistic in your mind, choosing only the thoughts that you liked the most, being good at that.

[00:23:17] That kind of minimalism can be very beneficial to me for creativity. Coming up with new and interesting and good and productive ideas.

[00:23:30] Ok, so let’s see if I can can make sense of this in my head.

[00:23:35] What you’re saying that in the beginning there is 97 percent crappy things and 3 percent good things.

[00:23:41] And by not being aware of that, the 97 percent is crappy. You keep repeating it over and over and over and over again. And there isn’t really much space for the three good presents. Exactly. But once you learn how to let go of those crappy things and not repeating the same thought over and over and over again, then suddenly becomes a vacuum or whatever, you feel more positive votes. So we could we could argue that this is just a theory that I’m making up now, that the negative patterns are stronger than the positive.

[00:24:15] And that’s why they kind of push the other things away.

[00:24:18] And once they’re less than the negative, there gets much more space for the positive.

[00:24:23] I think that’s a very, very well summary in my experience. I’m not sure if there were stronger. I actually think positive thoughts are more strong. They were more habitual. I had been doing it for my entire life and not everyone is going to be that. Skewed towards negativity, but I was back at the point in my life, and I find this book and I think that is exactly why I found it so meaningful. And if you’re not in that place, it might not be that useful.

[00:24:55] Okay. Yeah, because I read it and it flew right above my head. So I didn’t understand anything when I read that book. Yeah. No, that’s not true. So I read the book and it’s a heavy read. I recommended still, but it’s a heavy read. And I felt like 10 percent of the book was brilliant. And 90 percent of the book was nonsense. So with other other really, really good move, I felt that it was really, really stupid. And this made me question my own intelligence status under my own perspective.

[00:25:24] Like if 10 percent is brilliant and 90 percent feels like bullshit and nothing is in between. Maybe it’s used to me who don’t understand this present. Mm hmm.

[00:25:37] That’s some high level insight still. I like it. And to clarify, I think this I still think this is a very good book. I think it’s timeless. It’s called A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle. It. But the point of this rant is not to read that specific book.

[00:25:52] I think you can get to the very same effect through meditation, through practicing communication or just personal development in general and learning to choose thoughts that work for you.

[00:26:04] Thoughts that are the most productive and not treading, not continuing to think about the other negative stuff, because in my head I still have unnecessary thoughts all the time.

[00:26:16] Sometimes when I sit down and meditate to hear that, did you see Monty Python, that lumberjack song? He’s a lumberjack and he’s okay. He sleeps. So I hope he works all day. And if that’s not enough, press that what you mean? I look prescient on the outside, but that’s what’s going on inside. But the idea I don’t need to keep singing that song for the whole meditation practice. Right. And the practice is about getting back to prescence, even though that song is there.

[00:26:44] I love the mix of meditation and Monty Python. I think a lot of people, including myself, thinking about meditation is like so onlooking feeling sacred with their hands high up is.

[00:27:01] And in your head, it’s like, hey, boy, get your rocks off you while you’re in a Chinese car. You think you’re spiritual and you’re taking this very seriously, don’t you? I’m going to ruin your meditation for this obsession.

[00:27:17] Yeah. All right. But I think meditation. So would you like to summarize the the idea that you already have candidate?

[00:27:27] Yeah, I kind of did. I could re summarize it really quickly. Anyway, the main thing that I take with me from this is we’re having a lot of thoughts that doesn’t add value and we tend to repeat them and they might even be negative for us. And a big one there is if I only had this, I would be happy. Yeah. And it gives us an excuse not to be happy today. Yeah. And if we become aware of that and we can practice looking at that, this is just a thought. It’s not necessarily the truth. It’s just something popping up in my head and that’s fine. It will be easier to think of the positive things actually be happy in the moment.

[00:28:03] That is exactly right. And before moving on, I would like to add one more thing that I think is interesting with this kind of topics. And you might be listening and I think it kind of mind for life is very interesting. Or you might think this is very boring, but just try try this try this for a week or so and see if it changes anything. And that is instead of choosing something, what if you choose nothing? You choose the space. Now imagine that you are going up an elevator and you press the elevator button. My previous conditioned mind would be thinking about what am I going to do when I get up an apartment or what I’m going to do tomorrow where I bring my phone up, I look at Esera. Right. But what if I choose to just. Not think about anything. I just stand there. I experienced sense, perception. Maybe I’m looking at the elevator or I’m feeling my body or feeling the breath. And this might sound totally hipper to you, but if you are valuing creativity and getting new ideas, if you can find a way to create space for yourself where your mind isn’t filled with thought clutter. Look and see if more of those ideas drop in mistried tried.

[00:29:23] The connection to creativity there. It’s the same thing. So you give more space to positive thinking, but you also give more space for creative thinking.

[00:29:33] Yes, I choose nothingness often. So I think this is one of the biggest benefit of art cards. But book is that is talking about when you walk up a stair. Just focus on that experience. When my when I’m on a walk, just focus on the experience instead of being lost in thoughts and when there is space. Good things will just naturally drop in more often. In my experience.

[00:29:58] Yeah. Yes, I think so. If I’m sitting and watching TV, I’m rarely gonna come up with any brilliant ideas, but if I sit quiet or just take a walk quietly, then my mind is likely to come up with much better things. Because there is for sure. For sure.

[00:30:20] I can see that.

[00:30:23] All right. I’m ready to close this loop and move on. It’s funny, too. That sounds perfect. All right. Cause while reaching enlightenment and choosing not to go on. US to longer. We’re also building a company, right? Yes. How would you say minimalism is valuable when building a company? Are we minimalistic in great?

[00:30:49] So I’ve been thinking about this and I’ve been kind of taking pride in focus, and that focus could translate to another word for minimalism. And then I started asking myself this question yesterday, are we minimalistic domestic ingrates? And what would being really minimalistic in great mean? So the logic with great is first and foremost, we want to make money and give it away. That’s the key element of great, I would say. And then there is a lot of other things around that. If we’re super, super minimalistic, that’s the only thing we would do. And then I ask myself, what wouldn’t we do? And, for example, we probably wouldn’t run a podcast. It’s not the very minimalistic thing. We’re not making money from this. We’re learning things that maybe will make us money in the future or maybe help us in the other way. And we’re having a lot of fun. And the fun and the learning part is key here. But it’s not very minimalistic. And at the same time, we have chosen not to have offices. Instead, we’re sitting everywhere. You’re sitting in your living room. I’m in my little teeny tiny home office right now. And that is a very minimalistic approach. And it saves us money. It gives us focus. It has it’s good in many ways. So I can see us being a lot less minimalistic than we could be. And I believe it’s most of the time it’s a good thing. But I I don’t know.

[00:32:16] And.

[00:32:19] You’re one of the things that I’ve seen great doing for different businesses or legs of their business. And I started questioning if that stopped him a of doing so. To sum that up quickly, that’s we want to have one commercial leg that will make money. It’s going to be to see no marketing. One part of the side where we will compare charities and give the best experience to where you can donate money. One that will be about how to build an organization in whatever way we want to do it and what we learn from it. And one that is supposed to be inspirational and teaching things that we believe are valuable, that are not taught in school. And looking at this once again, it’s a very minimalistic approach. We’re trying to do four things when most businesses do one. So this made me question and I haven’t reach any conclusions on this. Is this really the right way to do or are we screwing ourself up here? Would it make sense to take one or two or maybe even three things away from this to be minimalistic and focus and be able to really do it well?

[00:33:25] Or is it a good idea to do or forum?

[00:33:29] And I think this has been the biggest insight for me from starting this conversation that we had yesterday.

[00:33:35] Is this question that is great, trying to do too many things and it might end up with us not managing to do anything properly just because of this.

[00:33:47] Mm hmm. So you think your thoughts, you think that is the biggest risk then read. Do you think the biggest risk at that is that we won’t be able to handle that many tasks? Or do you think the biggest risk is that our customers would be confused what we actually doing? So let’s say we want to do a really good share the product and that might be painted by the casino product that we want to do personal development stuff and that might be painted by the Kesena product, for example.

[00:34:19] And the other way around, I would say both. So if we if we go back to the analogy of the pizza and the hamburger. So basically now we’re saying yes to both. And that might mean that we’re not really giving our full attention to the hamburger or a full attention to the pizzas.

[00:34:39] We’re not really enjoying it. We’re trying to eat both. And it’s gonna be hard. And it also means that. All the time that we spend on. Yes. Let’s say we’re doing four things and we’re doing them equally. So spending 25 percent of our time on each project. It means that we’re not spending 75 percent of the time on one thing. If we were to spend 100 percent of our focus on one thing, it’s much more likely that that thing would be really, really good. And now we’re going to try to do four things with 25 percent of our potential. So it’s basically we’re not just saying yes to the pizza and the burger. We’re also saying yes to the salad and the pasta. And now we’re going to try to enjoy our lunch. And we want to eat all of them, because that’s the idea. And it’s going to be hard. It might be the best option to eat all of them. We might get really fat, but it might be the thing that is the most beneficial, but it’s not sure. And I think that this is.

[00:35:42] This is some very easy trap to fall into being an entrepreneur, running a business, because there are so many good ideas out there. You want to launch so many Samsung phones because it’s make sense, you think? But then at the end of day, you cluttering things up. So personally, I think this is the biggest risk that we’re losing some of the focus. And if we’re adding if we’re doing one thing really well or doing two things half as well as the first thing or three things one third as well. All of them or four things. Twenty five percent as well as potentially could be 10. That’s a tricky thing to say. I think that there is a reason why there isn’t one single professional football player in Champion’s League that’s also playing in the NHL hockey because you can’t it’s you will lose focus. And it’s a similar thing here and. Yes, I think that’s the biggest risk. But it’s also the risk then of the visitor not getting confused and seeing the same thing. What what am I going here for?

[00:36:48] So let’s stay on the first risk that we could switch today. So we’re not opening too many lives.

[00:36:53] Yes. OK. So we are worried now that if we are creating for product, our focus will be split.

[00:37:00] So one way I can see to prevent that then would be if we create almost like four different companies.

[00:37:10] So it’s four companies and one. So we would need to have four times as many employees, four times as high costs maybe. So would that be a way to get around that? And is that even reasonable? Would we have to lower it, watered down the quality?

[00:37:27] This goes down to one thing and I’m going to sound like a complete douchebag right now. But one thing we can’t create four of his me and I realized as the founder of this and as the founder of businesses before is that I’m exceptionally important to this project right now. If I went away, the project would go away. And in theory, we could create four of pretty much everything else. But we will not be able to have four founders. And for me. And that means that my time is always gonna be limited and. Maybe we could scale up a lot of that. Maybe I’m not as important as a couple of years from now, but going there I will be in the start phase. I will always be very important. And every time I spend my time at the start based on something new. That’s things that wouldn’t happen here.

[00:38:28] Yeah, that makes a lot of sense because no one is going to.

[00:38:33] I guess care about and know the business as well as you do, at least in the beginning, and you can’t put all of your focus on all of these different products. If you were only building a casino product, not doing the podcasting, not doing all of these other things. Obviously that project would move forward a lot quicker.

[00:38:53] Yeah, if I only wanted to be a football player, I’m gonna be a better football player than if I want to be a hockey player as well. Yeah. And still, it might be the right thing to do well for. But I can also see it being a trap that’s easy to fall into, especially wanting to start up all of them at once. Yeah. Yeah. So that’s that part of it. The other part of it is, as you mentioned, what will the visitor thing, how confusing is this? Mm hmm. And we could take that as a casino on charity. Ah, I still want to do both of those things just to clarify that. But let’s just play with the idea that is more or less as far away as you can come from each other. That would be like having a store that sells space ships and as well strawbery Platz. It would be a quite far away from each other on the spectrum and would be tricky to know if you’re coming in as a client.

[00:39:56] Should I spend one year on a strawberry plant or a billion euros on that spaceship?

[00:40:01] And it’s not going to really make sense to anyone. It maybe doesn’t have to.

[00:40:06] Maybe you will sell shitloads of spaceships from impulse buyers to authorities or maybe the people who want to buy spaceships instead by a billion.

[00:40:14] Stalberg That’s not my best moment of my life.

[00:40:20] I want to use this again and see I can see the sign. It’s a big space ship like space X. And then there are strawberries everywhere.

[00:40:29] Since it’s its logic, throw three ships through space ships incorporated.

[00:40:36] It’s the kunitz that they it makes sense that people will get confused. What would you put in the TV commercial? What would you name the brand? What would you do? Well, you said Strawberry Spaceship’s is that.

[00:40:49] It’s a great brand space strawberries.

[00:40:52] Well, it’s the same thing. It will it will create confusion. So the product will be less good. That’s because we spend less time on this specific thing. And at the same time, it will be confusing for a client. So a minimalistic approach and maybe the best approach would be to use one thing. Maybe it’s not. So this is where it’s worth questioning the bigger picture in all of these things as well. Maybe there are enough synergies for this. That is actually makes sense anyway. Mm hmm. But it’s it’s I’m less convinced today than I were two days ago. Yeah.

[00:41:28] So imagine now that there’s a young entrepreneur listening to this podcast. And when you are young, maybe you have created some space in your mind like your iPod. And there will be a lot of good ideas in there. And there might be three or four different things I do. Might be three or four different areas that I want to learn about, maybe even more. So what would you say to someone that is 18 and have a lot of ideas?

[00:42:00] I would say try lots of them. So one thing that I believe is that if you have lots of ideas, but you haven’t figured out which one that really works or which ones you really like, do them all or do lots of them and kill the projects early. So give it a try. Do I want to be a lawyer or do I want to go into medicine? I want to do this. Maybe you don’t start the actual practice, but you read a book on each topic. Or if you want to run different companies, maybe you want to sell underwear. Give that a little try. But he’s willing to kill the idea quickly. Or maybe you want to be an accountant. See, what is that like?

[00:42:40] But shouldn’t you try to stick into something that doesn’t feel good in the beginning?

[00:42:44] I tried to play the piano once and it hurt my head trying to get the chords right. It was really difficult in the beginning.

[00:42:52] Yeah. And did you keep doing it?

[00:42:54] No. How did you learn it?

[00:43:00] Personally, no. I don’t believe that. I think that if there isn’t at least passion in the early stage, what’s the reason to think that there will be passion in a later stage?

[00:43:10] That is true. I mean, I remember you and I were in L.A. and we tried salsa dancing. None of us had ever tried dancing before. And the lesson was very difficult for both of us. Both of us go haddock. And you loved it. And I hated it.

[00:43:26] And who’s a dancer now? Eric is a dancer, but does dance. Yeah. And this is what I’m saying.

[00:43:33] I think first trying to see. Am I passionate about this? And if you love something and it’s still really hard to make money from it, really hard to turn it into a business idea. At least you love it then. It makes a lot of sense. You can do it for the pure joy of doing it and then you’ll figure out other things. But if you find out I do not love this, it does not make sense. It was just the happiness idea that I had in my head speaking about before I thought I would be happy if I did this. So I lucked up my happiness on that island in that little cage, thinking that if I would only start this company, I would be happy. But then if you just tries like, Oh, that’s not the road to happiness, I need to try something somewhere else. But at the other hand, let’s say you have shoes and one of these ideas, you have started your company and you’re selling toothpicks. You love selling toothpicks and it’s actually doing well and then is very easy to think, oh, I should also go into plastic cutlery like forks. And that’s because my clients want to buy that as well. But the thing is, you might be really, really good at toothpicks. And it’s a very simple products. But every moment that you spend on developing the new product, it’s a moment that you’re not spending on getting more restaurants to buy your toothpaste where you’re already making money. You already know the business. You’re only doing all of these things. So you’re probably gonna be better off focusing on becoming the number one toothpick in the world rather than getting into something else. And that’s done from a pure business perspective. Maybe not. That’s not how you find the most joy. But if the question is where will I make the most difference or how will I make the most money, which is a common question to ask. It’s probably to stick with what you know. If you’ve found something that works and that you’re passionate about.

[00:45:15] I think that’s a very practical lens. I like that answer.

[00:45:20] So trauma to this and different things. If you find something that works and that you love. Love. Stick with that. Yeah. Yeah. All right. So do you want to add something to that or can move on?

[00:45:34] I think we’re running a bit short on time, but I was just about to say that I’m worried that this would be too long. And we talked about discussing relationships as well. But I think we’re better off and close in this episode.

[00:45:47] Yeah. And we’ll just leave the big cliffhanger of saying that we have a lot of other brilliant stuff to talk about on this topic.

[00:45:54] We do. It will be some other day. Exciting.

[00:46:00] All right. And do you have something to say goodbye before we wrap this up?

[00:46:05] Yeah, I’d like just to add that the elevator challenge that you mentioned before, you are listening. Feel free to do it. I think it’s very beneficial to you.

[00:46:15] And please send us an e-mail to the podcast straight up and tell us how to. And we will be more than happy to share some sneak peeks of what we wanted to talk about more in this episode.

[00:46:28] All right. You did the outperforming. I’ll just come out. Stops beeping. Yeah, you should. Goodbye. Goodbye.