#28 – Update – A period of doubt, August 2019

Transcript

[00:00:00] The hero’s journey. It’s a famous story structure that a lot of modern movies are made out of, like Star Wars, like Lion King that I recently saw on the movies. And in this hero’s journey in the story structure, there is always re-occurring teams. And one of those teams is called Doubt Where the Hero of the Journey. It’s not sure if he or she is going to make it all the way, this is to become a great podcast, a podcast about business and personal development, where me and my good buddy and the founder of great Eric Bergman are discussing our lives and its challenges. Coming up, building the organization, Great Dot.com, an organization that would give away 100 percent of its profits to charity. And we are kind of in that phase right now of the hero’s journey where we are facing challenges and doubts. So we wanted to do this episode a little bit different than usual in the sense that we had not really planned what to say here. Instead, we are going to explore the challenges that we face and we’re gonna see how we really feel about them.

[00:01:27] And as you might tell now, my voice is starting to fail. I have a little bit of cold and I want to say congratulations to that. You’ve experienced a little bit deeper, more Flemmi box.

[00:01:41] Eric, welcome in to the conversation today. How are you feeling? I feel like you’re through. Well, I didn’t feel the cold before we started this conversation like half an hour ago.

[00:01:56] And then I got a strong feeling that you’ve managed to, like, get me sick through the screen somehow. See, apprently really, really sick. Says it’s contagious through the computer.

[00:02:12] And now you’re muted your microphone.

[00:02:15] Erica’s in Stockholm right now. So I walked over to his flat yesterday and I licked his doorknob, spreading the love.

[00:02:23] Other than that, I’m just happy to referred to as a hero.

[00:02:26] So I’m gonna take it like the Earth journey analogy here. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That’s some good. So I think.

[00:02:36] How you doing is the most common question asked and answer. I’m good. It’s the most common lie. Cause I know that you are actually going through some stuff right now as the founder of Great. And I know you are frustrated. For example, or is that the right word?

[00:02:54] Yeah. So. In the last couple of days, four or five days, maybe, I’ve felt very easily annoyed and frustrated in general about small things. Not really sure what it comes from Laurie. Not sure where where it is, but feels like whenever something pokes me, I’m like turning into a evil monster kind of inside me. And I think this ties back to a lot of things going on in. In great, the kind of pressure I put myself put on myself in order for this to become something brilliant and something amazing. And right now I feel that we’re not. Moving. Fast enough. And that’s a big part of reason for that is how engaged I am and where I spend my time, because I feel that we have this amazing team in place and I haven’t really communicated my vision in a very clear way and I haven’t been present enough with each and everyone to make sure that we can strive towards that. So looking at it, I think that a lot of the frustration that I’m kind of sending out in the world right now is more towards myself than anything else. And I’m done reflecting it out somehow. So that’s where I am. If I’m going deeper on the question, how do you do instead of just going with good.

[00:04:37] So things are not moving as fast as you want, and you would have liked to be more involved in something to make things move along faster. Why is it frustrating for you that things are not moving forward?

[00:04:55] It’s a good question.

[00:04:59] So I think I think most things in life goes in cycles. And I think life as an entrepreneur goes in cycles, meaning that that’s some parts.

[00:05:11] It’s very easy. Things are just happening, things are happening. And at least I get into a kind of naive stage feeling that this is the way it’s gonna be all the time. And I picture myself keeping on this upward trend and going, going, going, going, going. And then suddenly things get haack and the night the naivete says, like, yeah. But it should be easy. And then it’s got heart and heart and hard and it takes a different trajectory than going upwards. It’s stagnant or standing more still, or instead of going in a deep upwards trend with everything going perfectly well, it’s actually not.

[00:05:48] And I think right now we’re getting to a place where it’s a big discrepancy.

[00:05:55] It’s a big difference between how quickly I saw this moving three months ago and where we would be able to be now, three months ago, six months ago and where we are. And it’s causing.

[00:06:12] I don’t know. I’m doubting myself as a leader in this. I’m doubting the way it’s structured. We’re trying out a lot of new things that I’ve never done before, like a remote organization, like new CEO Strategies, How to ranking Google. And I’ve been very convinced that everything is gonna work flawlessly.

[00:06:34] Naively convinced. And when it doesn’t, it’s like, oh.

[00:06:42] Right. And you said no. I think the life of an entrepreneur is in a circle. So you’re answering from your intellect and I’m guessing now that you might be feeling something that is a bit different than that. Maybe. So when a business isn’t running as smoothly as you want. It’s that kind of affecting your self-worth or is it more that you’re worried that you might fail or it’s annoying for you that you have more cost? What is the biggest thing that how it’s affecting you?

[00:07:21] So the feeling that I’m feeling is frustration and doubt. And I’m not sure what it relates to. Primarily part of it is it’s definitely cost. For example, we’re losing a lot of money at the moment and.

[00:07:43] I would love to.

[00:07:45] Well, there’s less money and make more money. And ironically, like no other businessmen ever have probably felt that way. So that’s that’s part of it.

[00:07:53] But I think I think it comes more down to.

[00:08:01] My feeling of where I want to use my time and what kind of output I see coming from that. So if I spend X amount of hours doing this podcast, I if I have this picture in my head, how big it would be, how many things that would come from that and put that will turn into. And how that will. Increased the value of doing this, and that hasn’t happened. To the extent that I would have loved it to be, and then I feel that I’m further away from that vision. So let’s say I let’s say I wanted to to run a marathon and one hour into the marathon. I when I’ve been preparing, I’ve been expecting to have a lot of energy left, to have a lot of power. I’ve gotten a far way on this marathon and now I feel like one hour in, I’m quite exhausted. I haven’t gotten as far as I wanted to. And it makes it harder to imagine what will the next three hours of the marathon be like. And at the same time, I’ve been through this before. I’ve been through periods of self-doubt. I’ve been through struggles. So I feel that this is a very normal part of the road, which is something I feel. I find comfort in. So if I haven’t experienced this before, I think that I would take the doubting thoughts into doubting emotions much stronger. Now I just feel like, yeah, it it’s it’s a face. It’s like a flu. It comes and it goes and then it’s kind of over. And it’s a part of the hero’s journey in every movie. And it’s part of your hero’s journey and every business. And in life, it’s.

[00:09:56] So I don’t I don’t feel as concerned about it as I probably would have done five years ago in a period of self-doubt. Now, it’s more like a natural part of the journey bothers me. It effects my mood in various ways. It affects my sleep. And at the same time, I feel a deeper, grounded confidence in that it’s still gonna work out.

[00:10:23] And five years ago, I wouldn’t have found that confidence.

[00:10:30] So is that kind of change in your perception of that feeling? Because in my experience that I experienced that frustration almost like a kind of anger when things are not working and it’s energizing me into changing something into some kind of action. Do you feel like those emotions are kind of useful or are they or do you think they are in the way you wish they weren’t there?

[00:11:03] I think that in some situations it would be something that gave me energy to get going and get shit done. And I think that’s what’s happens. If I know exactly what to do, if there is a clear path, if I if I’m moving to a different department and I know it’s an overwhelming thing to put everything down in boxes, but at least I know how to put things down in boxes. So it’s not gonna be a big challenge. It’s just get this shit done, get into it and do it. The challenge here is that it’s the bottleneck. It’s not what to do. The bottleneck is not to do it. The bottleneck is what to do. Like there’s creativity that needs to be involved. And inspiration that needs to be involved. Because I haven’t done these things before. I don’t know the road we’re taking that needs to be figured out along the way. And I feel that this feeling blocks energy and it blocks creativity for me. So instead of one, it just feels easy and creativity comes. And I mean, the flow and I’m doing things now, it feels like it’s holding me back. So I have a harder time seeing these things than I would otherwise. So at the moment, I struggle to see the positive in it, and that doesn’t say there isn’t a positive in it. I just struggle to see it.

[00:12:33] Yeah, I think that makes sense, and I often in hindsight, those emotions and dida stuck. Those emotions inspire can be useful, but it’s very difficult to see it in the moment. And it’s actually very unfair to point that out to someone that is going through it right now. I can see that, yeah. Since we’re doing a podcast on next week’s podcast, we’re gonna talk about creativity and how to get out of these blocks from being creative. So if you thought that loop sounded interested, interesting. You should check out next week’s episode. But for now, I’m really curious about something because. What you’re doing now basically is that you are the leader of an organization and you are in a podcast saying that I’m having doubts about myself. I have doubts about the organization. I have doubts about things that the way we do stuff and I don’t really feel confident or trust in this.

[00:13:34] And that is quite contradictory to how.

[00:13:40] Classical how I picture a classical leader of a company that has a suit on and looks very confident and is talking about the positive things. And I think you call this vulnerable leadership before, which is being open and transparent about how you feel and.

[00:14:00] Why? Why do you want to do this? Why do you think this is important?

[00:14:07] So I can totally see that this is something saying this can bring doubt into an organization, can start raising questions in a team and can in the short term be a very negative thing.

[00:14:21] And what I believe will will vulnerable leadership with with honesty is like, imagine that you’re in you’re in a forest and it’s it’s dark. It’s all you see are shapes and shadows. And a shadow says shadows and. Any tree can kind of look like a monster. Then it’s like everything can be scary because you don’t really know what you’re looking at. And I think that’s how regular kind of leadership relationships would be when everything isn’t set, where there is a lot of hidden stuff, like if I if if you don’t know if I’m doubting something and then you kind of sense it, then that can turn into that tree looking monster and you can read it as something that it’s not because you don’t have the full picture. And then we’re in the same forest, but the light is on and you see the dark tree is not dangerous and almost none of the trees are dangerous. But there could actually be a scary bear somewhere. But at least now you see it and you know how to act with it.

[00:15:26] And before, maybe you were looking at that horrible shadow thing that wasn’t dangerous and the bear came in at you from behind. So I think what I’m doing with this is that I’m showing the bear and it means that, OK, here is something that we probably should worry about, that you don’t need to worry about any of the other things. The lights. There you see it. And I’m worrying about the bear as well. And if we kind of go together and we either run from the bears together or we scare the bear away together or however we deal with a bear, maybe we start scratching among his chin and turning into a little friendly pet.

[00:16:01] So we use the bear to our advantage. Then I think that what comes from this is I think that in the long term we will go through this forest with lights on, because whenever I see a bear, I actually say there’s bear here.

[00:16:18] That makes sense. Yeah. So let me reteach the metaphor in plain English. You’re saying that if you are openly saying when you have doubt, that means that when you’re not saying anything, people can trust that you don’t have that.

[00:16:33] Exactly right. And that goes for anything. So that is a clear upside down to vulnerable leadership that you become more trustworthy.

[00:16:43] And at the same time then because now you’re saying that I wish we were further along or I wish I could be more involved. Couldn’t that spread a feeling of maybe not being good enough or not doing a good enough job to people that are doing the tasks that you say you want to be more involved in?

[00:17:02] Yeah, definitely. I can totally see that happening.

[00:17:06] And at the same time, I feel very responsible for that. I feel that we would be further along if my time was better focused on getting us there. And it’s also like what is further along, because I don’t feel that I have communicated where I want to be or where I would like us to be. So if if I really want us to head as far possible north as I could. I haven’t really told anyone that, then maybe some other guys want to go west or east. And we’re getting very far from where we started, but we’re not heading in the north direction that I was intending to. And if I haven’t been with people sharing that part, saying, hey, this is how I think we should get north, then everyone might be doing a perfect job at what they are intended to do. It’s just that we haven’t aligned that in a in a good way. So we’re heading in the same direction or going with the same vehicle. Maybe some people one walk and some people want to run and some people want to drive a tank. I don’t know. It’s kind of like I think at the moment I feel that we have a great team in place that doing awesome stuff. And the bottom line is me.

[00:18:26] That makes sense.

[00:18:31] I guess what’s tricky and interesting about this conversation is that we are having a remote organization. So that means that we’re having meetings where we are talking about very specific stuff. So if there is no water cooler, there’s no lunch break. There’s no time for you to really talk about how you feel about stuff with people and connect. How have you thought about the challenges and how do you think about the challenges of sharing between team members? How we think about things, feel about things.

[00:19:06] I think that’s really tricky, especially doing a podcast like this as well.

[00:19:11] And I haven’t expressed this. I haven’t really felt this along or whatever it is. So when I’m talking about it like this and someone in the team listens to it who I haven’t spoken to about it, it can come as a shock or like, okay, what’s going on? How is this gonna affect everything? Why are we heading this way? And if we were seven people, were seven people in a small team in a small office, that wouldn’t have happened. It would be very easy for everyone to do talked about that or feel that or communicate about that.

[00:19:44] And now it’s not it’s it’s a big challenge where there can come a lot of misunderstandings. And I also feel. Kind of like I’m going behind the team’s back by talking about it here, and I haven’t expressively said it to everyone or everything. And. Yeah, it’s it’s just triggers, I think that the best thing that can be done is to just always be open with it. Same thing here, like, okay, I will talk about it. I will turn on the lights.

[00:20:18] So whenever there is something, the urge will be there. Because I think a challenge of not talking to each other a lot leaves the light off a lot of the time. So that means OK. Did you have any tension? We’re not saying this. Am I the one who’s letting him down? Is this the project that’s not going where it should be? All of these kind of questions. And if we’re not talking to each other, which we are, and because we’re not in the same office, then those doubts become much, much larger. If there isn’t a feeling that whenever something is actually going on, he will say it, you know?

[00:20:53] Yeah, and my guess is that it becomes even more important in non-remote organization to share all of these things just in plain words, because there is no possibility to cannot be in the same office as you sense, your temper can pick up what’s actually going on inside of you. For Delta team members now, there isn’t. Have you done this before at all? What was it like in your last work, for example, at Catina? Did did you do any kind of vulnerable leadership?

[00:21:35] Not to this extent. And not with a team in general. I had that relationship with with some people in the team.

[00:21:46] Now, very few, to be honest, very, very few. So, no, I wouldn’t say that. I’ve had it’s been. I used to come into the office feeling that I want to be a big role model here. I was there early. I left late. I was pushing myself in ways that I realized wasn’t healthy because I wanted other people to push themselves in a way that I realized wasn’t healthy. And instead of showing that. Okay, guys, I’m almost burning out. Now it’s better that I take a break. So it’s OK for you to take a break.

[00:22:16] I did the opposite and I can see that wasn’t sustainable at all. And I also remember I was having a lot of. Confusion around these kind of things, like I’ve told us in some other podcast episode and remember which one, unfortunately. But when when we were giving out new agreements to the team and there was a lot of misunderstandings, and I think that was what happened there. Was it in the agreement that said we own everything that you do, you’re doing your employment.

[00:22:51] Which meant that we own everything that you do in the office that we paid for. And the team read that as we owed everything you do. So a guy who was writing a book on the other side was about to quit his job because he was afraid that we would own the book, which wasn’t at all mad about. And I think the same thing goes there that because the light wasn’t on, it created confusion. So people didn’t trust that the agreement was in their best interest because we didn’t say the things that could have been bad for them. And instead we just handed out so whatever wasn’t bad for them. They read as it was bad for us.

[00:23:25] If you would have had a history of saying, OK, guys, we have this new thing going on and decent, decent, these things are gonna be bad for you in this.

[00:23:32] Yeah. Then they wouldn’t I believe they wouldn’t have misunderstood the things that actually wasn’t bad for them at all. Yeah. So that the light wasn’t on.

[00:23:41] So by leaving with the downside of things and the bad stuff that makes people trust the good stuff even more.

[00:23:48] Yeah. And they will trust that there isn’t other bad stuff because everyone always knows there is bad stuff going on. I mean there is there isn’t such a thing as pink unicorn rainbows and fluffy clouds every day. Sometimes Donald Trump is gonna pop into that and he’s gonna destroy the party.

[00:24:07] It’s true. Maybe one day, maybe one day.

[00:24:12] Yeah, that’s the thing. I think that if if everything looks too good to be true, people sense it. And it generally is too good to be true. So I think a great way around that is to actually show this is not too good to be true. Here is the challenges and we’re gonna solve it, aren’t you?

[00:24:28] Can loosing power as a leader, though, cause. My guess is that people believe a leader that seems strong more, they believe a leader that appears to be a superhuman. People have maybe higher trust in that person.

[00:24:51] Short term, yes, I completely agree. Short term people want to follow something that looks like a very strong force of nature and long term. I don’t think so. I think long term people want to follow a human who they can relate to. And that still can be a force of nature. I can very impressive person, because let’s say you are. You seem to be 100 percent perfect. No one is actually going to believe that long term that you are 100 percent perfect. So they might consider you to be 80 percent perfect, 20 percent a liar, because in the long term, you’re just not human. You can’t connect with people if you’re never suffering and. If you’re actually 95 percent perfect or whatever you’re doing 95 percent really good, then you’re really impressive as it is. You’re a really strong leader with five times you’re showing very vulnerably how you’re feeling and what you are doing and you’re connecting with people that way. I think that that creates a human that people feel empathy for, that people wants to be around, that people feel connected with and that people dare to open up their own vulnerabilities about. But if someone is 100 percent perfect, I think that people don’t dare to show their real self because there’s too far away from the ideal. So short term, I think that people want to follow that perfect guy, but long term people want to be connected and feel involved with the human.

[00:26:26] Yeah. Thanks, sir. Actually, some people, maybe some people just want to feel this excitement. But finally, here’s the perfect one. The Jesus character.

[00:26:36] Yeah, I think there are those kinds of people as well. And that’s not the kind of people I want to build a team with. I mean, it’s very, very lonely to be in a place. Where are you? I would feel very, very lonely if I was in a place where I didn’t show my vulnerability, where I maybe I went to maybe the team felt confident, come with me with their problems. So I felt that I was helping the team and supporting them. But if I couldn’t share my problems, I couldn’t be human with them, I would feel lonely in their presence. And at the time when I’m doubting something, I want to elaborate on this and talk about it and see how it feels. I want to feel supported by the team and like, yeah, but Eric, this and this is a good thing we’re heading this in this direction. I don’t want to carry all that responsibility of my feelings of my own shoulders all the time. I want to be able to get support in the same as I want to support others.

[00:27:35] So what about then that gives you said you feel. I’m sure if you said scared of frustrated that the organization right now is losing money. I’m not sure which word you used. And I’ve seen other people’s like, take a very clear example. Elon Musk. That is almost taken pride that he’s taking all of his money from people gambling it all on on Tesla and you’re doing kind of the opposite thing, you’re taking out your game to it, kind of a small piece of your Catina fortune here and steal your expressing worry about this. And that would be kind of the opposite strategy to someone like Musk that is almost building a heroic character around, taking a huge risk. And how do you think that affects your image, your ethos, your the way people view you as a entrepreneur?

[00:28:33] So I have this big fortune and I don’t consider it to be my money. I consider it money to give away money to make a huge difference.

[00:28:45] And if I consider this my money and I would buy a boat for it or a private jet or whatever, and I gambled with a boat or a private jet, I would be fine with that because worst case scenario, I didn’t get the boat. I didn’t get a private jet, which I didn’t care that much for. But my intention is to give all of this away. I mean, at my death. But I’m not going to keep anything. And hopefully I’ve given most of it away before them and some actually not gambling with a boat or a private jet, which I believe most entrepreneurs are. I’m gambling with the lives of innocent people who I want to help.

[00:29:20] And every every money I spend that I don’t feel they’re fairly well invested then is money down the drain that could have helped someone. So that’s that’s how I see this.

[00:29:32] It would be if I only gambled with my own well-being. I bet all my money, 50 million dollars on rent. And it was intended to give my life a better or worse. And I was gonna waste it on something meaningless anyway. I could probably take that bet. But if I’m gambling with poor people’s money or the planets money or whatever it is, because that’s where I see these money belong. I can’t live with myself if I lose that money. That’s just very responsible.

[00:30:06] I like that perspective.

[00:30:10] And I think that is a good time to start wrapping this episode up. Do you have some final thoughts or feelings you want to share?

[00:30:23] Now I’m feeling good. It’s interesting to explore these topics, and I think that a lot of entrepreneurs and people in general go through similar things in just other perspective so that all the stories have the same hero’s journey.

[00:30:40] There’s just different characters and different problems. But I think that this is something that a lot of people can relate to.

[00:30:50] And I really liked the idea of vulnerable leadership. I think there is something something in there to build trust, which I think is such a key ingredient as a leader. So it’s well worth paying attention to. And if you are listening to this and you have any questions to us or if you have any feedback on this episode, we tried something a little bit different here by not preparing anything. We talked about these topics before and we said, let’s not talk about it until we’re in the podcast. So if you thought this was too. Not enough prepared to let us know if you liked this exploration version of the podcast. Let us know by sending us an e-mail to podcast.

[00:31:33] Great dot com. And we’ll see you next week for an episode about how to get through creative blogs. See you, bye Eric. Bye bye.