Turn on thecamera. Turn on thecamera.
I got a rant foryou. I feel like I could rule theworld.
I know I could be what I want to I put my all in it like nodays.
I'll I got a call yesterday from a entrepreneur who was going through something that is sorelatable.
They werestuck. They're at aplateau.
Their business notgrowing.
He'sfaster. They were pitching me on all the new things that we're going todo.
The new features they were going toadd, the new project and then they told me to start telling about the side hustle that they got going on and I had to stop them and I had to tell them thetruth.
The truth is stop searching foranswers.
We are all guilty ofthis.
Youknow, like if I'm fat all of a sudden I'mketo, I'mpaleo, I'm readingbooks, I'm listening to podcasts and I'm not just doing the obviousthings.
The trap that people fall into is thinking that the answer to their problems is elsewhere that maybe a mentor has it or a book has it or there's some knowledge that they don't have and that's what's holding themback.
But that's really never thecase.
If I talk to nine or ten people only one might need a strategy change for nine out often.
The answer is up your level ofintensity.
Allright, let's take a quickbreak.
I got to tell you you ever seen those Coachella posters where it's got all the artists names and you'relike, oh mygod,wow, they got youknow, Fred again and screw legs and this that's what the HubSpot inbound conference lookslike.
Just listen to the speaker list that theyhave.
I don't know how they pull this off but look listen tothis.
RyanReynolds, SerenaWilliams, CaraSwisher, MattWolf,Darmesh, they got BrianHalley, they got tons of good speakers at HubSpotsinbound.
It's coming up it's September 18th to the20th.
It's live in Boston and it's where you go if you want to learn marketing sales AItrends.
You want to know where the puck is going so that you can be there before everybodyelse.
Tons of great talks on stage where you're going to learn salesstrategies, improving marketingtactics, but also the networking where you get to meet other people and understand what are other people in the industrydoing.
How are other people getting ahead so check it out go to inbound.com to see the lineup and grab your ticketstoday.
The best part about intensity is that it's contagious that you can actually create a culture ofintensity.
There's a wonderful story about Peter Teal when he was runningPayPal.
So Peter Teal was one ofthe, it was a CEO ofPayPal.
He's the first investor inFacebook.
And I wascurious, this Peter Teal is kind of like a sort of weird dude and I waslike, he doesn't seem like a classic managerleader, inspiringguy, super organized buttondown, running dailystandups.
It turns out he didn't really do any of thatshit.
He had a very simplesystem.
His common sense systemwas,well, everybody in the company should figure out onepriority.
Likeyou, you should have one priority in yourbrain.
You're going to do onething.
What's it going tobe? Enforcing people to figure out onepriority, not a to dolist, but a single priority was an incredible forcingfunction.
Everybody had to say something and if you said somethingstupid, it would belike, that's yourpriority.
And so everybody picked onepriority, but now that'sgood.
But that's justlike, youknow, the very very first half of thebattle.
What's the secondhalf?
Actually sticking to that because human nature is everything feelsimportant.
I have my onepriority. But then there's the second thing that's important to and then there's a third thing that's important to and the problem with this that Peter said wasthat.
Imagine you have threepriorities.
And even if you stack rankedthem, you said this is number one numbertwo, numberthree.
What happens is that we often don't know the answer to numberone.
Number one lacks a clearsolution.
It's a gnarlyproblem. It's an importantproblem.
But it's not an obviousproblem.
So what we do is we just gravitate towards the second task because it's muchclearer.
I know what to dothere. So I gravitate towards theknown.
It's that a Warren Buffett story where the guy lost his keys outside of abar.
So we've crawling around on the ground trying to find his keys and the officersays,sir, what are youdoing?
I'm looking for mykeys.
Did you drop himhere?No, I dropped him overthere.
Well, why are you crawling overhere?
Because this is where the lightis.
And that's how most people operate in their day to daypriorities.
We crawl around where the lightis.
We crawl around doing the known things that things that feel familiar to us rather than the importantthings, the things where the solution actually is overthere.
It's just in thedark. And so Peter Till what he would do is if anybody tried to talk to him about something that was notthere.
Their bigthing. Their onething.
It would literally just leave theroom.
He'slike,oh, you're talking to me aboutthat.
I thought you think is thisokay.
Seeyou. He'slike, I'm not going to sit here and try to convinceyou, but I will signal to you that this is not a priority by literally just leaving the meeting or leaving the room or just not refusing to talk to you about anything besides your one thing to teal what he said was hegoes.
If you allow yourself to have more than onefocus, you've alreadyblinked.
I love that you've alreadyblinked.
You've flinched and hesays, youknow, you've determined that mediocrity is an acceptableoutcome.
My singular focus philosophy is that solutions may not beclear, but the path to excellence and value are in the path to excellence and value is to have a singularfocus.
And I believe this to betrue.
I believe that the mind is a very powerfultool.
I call the brain a answeringmachine.
It's just about what question you askit.
If you ask yourself a bunch of questionslike, why did this person cut me off your brain will tell you because they're anasshole.
Because you've told your brain to focus its attention on why this person cuts you off intraffic,right?
You've focused your powerful tool on a silly thing to focuson.
And the brain can really only handle one question at atime.
It's not as much as we think we canmultitask.
We reallycan't. We can kind of solve one problem at atime.
It's just a question of what are you going to load into yourbrain?
And are you willing to let it sit there and tell it is solved that Peter teal one priority philosophy is a very powerful one is something that I implement on my day to daybasis.
Allright, so first let me dispel some myths because I can already hear you in thecomments.
I can hear you type it away because what you're thinking is probably what I used tothink, whichis,dude, I don't want to work 24seven.
That's not mygoal.Well, intensity is not working 24seven.
That's the firstthing.
Intensity is a formulaactually.
It is focus times common sense timesinsanity.
That'sit. Focus times common sense timesinsanity.
That is what I mean when I sayintensity.
There's a greatquote. By theway, I saw Conor McGregor and Conor McGregor storiesinsane.
He went from a plumber on welfare to the highest paid richest athlete in the world on the Forbes list to the first two weight world champion in theUFC.
And he did this all in like five or sixyears.
And there was a video of him after his trainingsession.
And he says the followinggoes, I've lost my mind to this game like Vincent vanGogh, he dedicated his mind to his art and he lost his mind in theprocess.
That is what's happened tome.
But fuckit. When that gold belt is around mywaist, when my mother has a bigmansion, when my girlfriend has a different car for every day of theweek, when my kids kids can have everything theywant, then it will payoff.
Then I will behappy. I've lost mymind.
And that is the level of intensity and insanity that you can get to if you really do this at a level12.
And not everybody's going to want to do this at level12, but you should know what level 12 lookslike.
You should know what itis.
And then you get to decide how you're going to dial that knobdown.
The problem most people have is they think they're already at a level10.
They don't even consider level12.
They think they're already at 10 when the next reality there atsix.
And today I'm going to show you how you are at a six and you're not at a 10 because that is a lie as a dangerouslie.
We want to tellourselves.
The othermisconception, by theway,is,oh,great.
I got to domore. I'm alreadybusy.
I'm alreadyoverwhelmed.
Now I got to domore.No,no,no.
It's actually theopposite.
You were going to end up doingless.
There's a great Steve Jobsquote.
I'm going to butcherit.
But it's basically something like focus is saying no to 100 greatideas.
So you can say yes to the one exceptionalone.
Focus is saying no to 100 greatideas.
Great ideas are ideas that you could totally make a case for that you would see it seems smart for you to godo.
But doing 100 of them doesn'twork.
Right. You can doanything.
You just can't doeverything.
And so focus is saying no to the 100 great ideas so you can do the one exceptionone.
So if you do thisright. You're not doingmore.
You're actually doingless.
You're just doing itbetter.
So,okay, let's jump into some examples on a start with some business examples because there's plenty of like inspirational athlete stories or just kind of like generalmotivation.
But this is a businesspodcast.
I am all aboutbusiness.
So let's do the firstone.
So first one is MarkZuckerberg.
So there's a great story of Zuck when he boughtInstagram.
And by theway, today if Facebook had not boughtInstagram, Facebook might bedead.
Instagram like literally ended up becoming the next socialnetwork.
It was going to be his biggest competitor in Facebook boughtit.
Well,okay, that'scool.
That's just a businessdecision.
Right. It's a strategydecision.
No,no, it was a story ofintensity.
So here's how the storygoes.
The founder ofInstagram.
Kevin's system used to work at a place calledOdeo.
He was actually kind of like an intern sitting at the desk next to this guy named JackDorsey.
Odeo Pivis toTwitter. That becomesTwitter.
Jack Dorsey ends up being the CEO of Twitter at one pointtime.
And Jack Dorsey is kind of like hismentor.
So Kevin createsInstagram.
Twitter doesn't have photo sharing Twitter says we want to buy Instagram and they offered to buy it for something like $400 or $500million.
Andagain, this is they have therelationship.
They were first to make theoffer.
They offered a big sum ofmoney.
So they did what they thought was level 12intensity.
But then Zuck came and showed them what'sup.
So the way that the story goes down is Mark Zuckerberg starts texting Kevin'ssystem.
And hesays,Hey, I want tome.
I want to talk to you about buying the company and Mark's intensity is almostknown.
It's sort of legendary in theindustry.
So Kevin is texting his investor and he'ssaying, should I meet withZuck?
I don'tworry. If I gothere, I don't really want tosell.
And I feel like if I tell him I don't want tosell, is he just going to go into like psycho mode and crush me and the investorgoes,yeah,probably.
And so he'slike,OK, I guess I'll take themeeting.
He already has a deal on the table to sell to Twitter for $550million.
He then meets withSequoia, the number one VC in SiliconValley.
And theysay, you knowwhat?
You should stayindependent.
Instagram can bebig. We will fund you at $500million.
So samevaluation. But you get to keepgoing.
You get to keep yourindependence.
But he goes to meetZuck.
And hegoes, unlikeTwitter, Zuck did not take no for ananswer.
So he rejects Zuckfirst.
Zucksays,no,no, just come over to my house andtalk.
Can you just come overtoday?
Hesays, I guess I got to go overthere.
I don't want to really piss the skyoff.
So he justsays,OK, I'll just go overthere.
So it goes to hishouse. And now this is goodFriday, youknow, Easter is onSunday.
He goes to his house on Friday and he walks in and Zuck says the followingsays, I thought aboutit.
And I want to buy yourcompany.
And Kevin'slike, Iknow, but I already saidno.
Hesays, I will give you double whatever you're you're currently raising yourround.
So whatever yourprices, I'll give youdouble.
And that would mean that Instagram would be worth a billiondollars.
And nobody had ever paid this much for a mobile appbefore.
This would be the first deal of itskind.
Instagram had zerorevenue.
Had like less than 20employees.
It wastiny. This seemed likeit, youknow, I'll read just leave over the top way of going aboutthis.
And Zucksaid,well,look, I can give you a billion dollars forthis.
But here's thedeal. We got to do this deal thisweekend.
And he basically pushedhim.
And this wasagain, it's Easter onSunday.
Nobody's working over theweekend.
The Twitter guys think that they have a deal in thebag.
The Sequoia guys think that they have the deal in thebag.
And the mistake they made was they thought that work starts onMondays.
And Zuck just decided to work over theweekend.
So he basicallysaid,look, let's stayhere.
And we'll either hash out the deal and we'll make a dealhappen.
Or we'll figure out that a deal is not going tohappen.
But let's justagree. We're going to stayhere.
And we're going to figure itout.
So hesays,okay, so they basically stay together for 48hours.
Zuck calls hislawyers.
He calls his corp devguys.
Hesays, get overhere. We got to figure out how we're going to close this dealnow.
Kevin calls hisinvestors.
He'slike,hey, I'm thinking about having thisdeal.
And here's thequote. One of his investorsays, I sat back andthought, what justhappened?
Like, holyshit. What justhappened?
How did he pull thisoff?
And Zuck had this belief that if we don't create the thing that killsFacebook, somebody elsewill, the internet's not a friendlyplace.
I have to act with a certain level of intensity when we find a deal that's likethis.
And so over theweekend, just to give you aperspective, to do a billion dollar deal generally takestime.
Six months will go by nine months will goby.
Zuck his lawyers and the founder of hisfamily, they end up cutting this deal over theweekend.
They do a billion dollar deal in 48hours.
And by the time the competition woke up onMonday, the deal wasgone.
So that's the story of how Zuck buysInstagram.
And by theway, this is not the firsttime.
He also boughtWhatsApp.
How he bought WhatsApp was the sameway.
And WhatsApp had the rightculture.
What's WhatsApp also operated with highintensity.
There's a famous story that the founder of WhatsApp had the sticky note on his desk and they took a picture of it when he sold itsaid, noads, nogames, nogimmicks.
That was theirmindset.
Every other messaging app was always adding more and morefeatures.
They would addgames. They would addstickers.
They would add some some ads intoit.
They would just keep addingthings.
And theysaid, with the way we're going to win is we're going to do the basic thingmessaging.
We're just going to do it better than anybodyelse.
They were likeChick-fil-A.
You ever been to aChick-fil-A?
You don't go to Chick-fil-A because Chick-fil-A adds fish fillets on themenu.
No,no, Chick-fil-A decided to have a common sensestrategy.
We're going to sell chickensandwiches.
And they just do it with the better level of intensity than anybodyelse.
They sell a better chickensandwich.
In and out does the samething.
In and out it's like we're going to sell a burger and fries is not a revolutionarystrategy.
They did notpivot. They did not innovate inthat.
They just brought a higher level of intensity to it than anybody else was willing to do at thetime.
And so those two fast food chains make more money per location than chains that do 10 times more things that have a wider menu that have more locations because they operate with a higher level ofintensity.
That's the same way that WhatsApp and Zuckerberg approachbusiness.
The founder of WhatsApp alwayssaid, hegoes, the F word around here isfocus.
Hesays, I don't think about things that I can't figureout.
I don't think about thefuture.
I don't go to conferences and give talks about where the industry isgoing.
Hegoes, I focus my bringing around the things that I can wrap my headaround.
Like this customer's complaining about thisthing.
Let me go fix thatbug. And he said that the reason they sold a Facebook was because Zucker chased them for two yearspersonally.
He would meet them forcoffee.
Then ahike. No deal wouldhappen.
He would keep inviting themhikes,dinners,coffees.
And if you do that for two years until finally they were lented and they ended up closing thedeal.
Okay, I want to talk to you aboutstripe.
One of the stories I love about stripe comes from PaulGraham.
Paul Graham was running YC at the time when stripe went throughit.
He met the founders earlyon.
And these were a couple of teenagers that were basically saying we're going to change the financialsystem.
We're going to change the paymentsystem.
We're going to go work withbanks.
And he'slike, these two red headed teenagers think that they could dothis.
Allright,well, I'mcurious.
Let's see whathappens.
And he noted that stripe was doing one thing very differently than the average company throughYC.
Remember, YC is the best of thebest.
So these guys were uncommon amongst the uncommoncompanies.
And so he called it the call us aninstallation.
He said most companies when they would talk to a potentialcustomer.
They would bump into anotherfounder.
They wouldsay,Oh,yeah, here's what wedo.
They wouldsay,Oh, that'sinteresting.
That'scool. Hesaid,Awesome.
You'reinterested.Cool.
I'll send you alink. I'll send you an invite to the beta when we'reready.
And you can signup. That's what most peopledo.
He said what the call us in do is verydifferent.
We started calling this the call us aninstallation, which would be as soon as somebody showed any sign ofinterest.
They wouldsay,Awesome.
Do you have your laptop onyou?
I can just set you up rightnow.
I'll do it foryou. And they would literally brute force get customers onboard.
The person would open up theirlaptop.
And they would literally installstripe.
They would explain it tothem.
And they would onboard them on thespot.
And they did this to the first 100 200 customersmanually.
And Paul Graham noted hegoes, youknow, I wonder why don't more people dothis.
It's not like this was some outrageousstrategy.
It's not that it was even like that hard todo.
He said the reason people don't do this is twothings.
Shindness or fear ofrejection.
He was also a misconception because they think that big things come from bigthings, but actually big things come from an accumulation of smallerthings.
And that was a beautiful way of putting it to understand how big thing happens is just a accumulation of smallerthings.
And he said that many people believe thatstartups.
You know take off or they don't take off that your business either works or it doesn'twork.
And he said actually what I've learned doing YC is that startups happen because the founder makes themhappen.
They take off because the founder makes them takeoff.
And he goes it's like anengine,right?
You can't force something that's never going to work towork.
What you can do is if something has the potential towork, you can crank that engine manually hand crank it to get itgoing.
And then itstarts. And once the enginestarted, youknow, you push the boulderenough.
Eventually it starts toroll.
And now you're chasing the momentum of it rollingdownhill, but at the beginning it felt like pushing it to the top of thehill.
And I thought that was a great analogy of howstripe.
Operated with a higher level ofintensity.
And if that's how they onboardedcustomers, imagine how they did the 10 other things because how you do one thing is how you doeverything.
And then the gap that people fall into is thinking that the answer to their problems is elsewhere that maybe a mentor has it or a book has it or there's some knowledge that they don't have and that's what's holding themback, but that's really never thecase.
So rarely is that thecase.
Almost always the answer you seek is withit.
One of the great stories about this comes from BenHorowitz.
He has thisphrase. Hegoes, ledbullets, not silverbullets.
And he's talking about when he was running hiscompany, they were at a very toughpoint.
There was toughcompetition.
The company wasonline.
It was going to go go bust or they were going to figure out a way to makeit.
He was my first instinct was to pivot to try to find a magicalwin.
It's a magical solution or rabbit out of ahat.
He'slike, I so wanted to stand in front of my company andsay,aha, I have theanswer.
I went for thiswalk. I met thisguy.
And here's theanswer. We just got to do this and it allworkout.
Hesaid, but that's not really how itworked.
Hegoes, I stood in front of the company and I told them Isaid, there are no silver bullets for this only ledbullets.
They didn't want to hearthat, but I had to make itclear.
We simply had to build a betterproduct.
There was no other wayout.
There's nowindow, nohole, no escapehatch, no backdoor.
We have to go through the front door and deal with the big ugly guy that's blockingit.
We needed ledbullets. In myexperience, the thing that's actually come out of this philosophy of there are no several bullets is that actually there are silverbullets.
But the only way you discover them is by just firing a shit ton of bullets that you think areled.
And then you sort of pleasantly surprise yourself when you find oneidea, oneexperiment, one tactic that totally works in an outsideway.
You find your silverbullet, but the only way to do that is by being the guy who believes there are only ledbullets.
I'm going to I'm willing to fire all the led bullets in order to make this work versus the guy who's going to run around trying to just find the one magical silver bullet and really take noaction.
If you wanted to look at your piechart, you should be spending maybe10% of your time on the idea or the strategy side ofthings.
It is important to get a goodstrategy, but it's usually a very common sensestrategy.
If your strategy isconvoluted, if your strategy requires multiple new innovations and leaps offaith, you are likely going tofail.
You are likely deluding yourself into thinking that the pie chart is80% ideas and20% execution is much more like 10 or20% ideas and strategy and80% blood sweat andtears.
And that blood sweat and tears should come from a certain level ofintensity.
It's not simply about working morehours.
It's not simply about just bearing yourself in theoffice.
There are times where you'll dothat.
And that's the other kind of philosophy that you shouldinternalize, which is there is a time tosprint.
You cannot sprint the wholetime.
You cannot always be running your maxspeed.
It doesn't work thatway.
But you should be able to recognize when you need to change years and you need tosprint.
One of the stories I love I've talked about this in the podcast before is the story of SylvesterStallone.
Sylvester Stallone wants to be anactor.
So he goes in the auditions everywhere and he can't get aroll.
Nobody wants to cast him as anactor.
He doesn't look the part is mouth moves a little funny because he had a problem atbirth.
And he just wasn't theguy.
He wasn't the classic Hollywood face doesn't giveup.
He decides take matters into his ownhands.
Hesays, if I can't get cast in amovie, I will make a movie and I will give myself therole.
The problem is he hateswriting.
So hedecides,well, I'm going to for this I got asprint.
I am going to do this thing the best Ican.
But I will plow through I will brute force my way tothis.
So he goes to his house and decides to write amovie.
He writes the first script of Rocky the rough draft of Rocky in threedays.
Threedays, most of the time he did it in threedays.
He talks about how he did I want to read you thisquote.
This is the semester slow and talking aboutfocus.
His daughter askedhim, shegoes, did you really paint your windows black tofocus?
Hegoes,yeah, I did paint the black because I didn't want to know what time itwas.
It didn't matter what time itwas.
It was time towrite.Otherwise, I would tellmyself,oh, it's time to frug time forbreakfast.
And I would immediately derailmyself.
I wouldsay,well, I'm just going to have breakfast out ofhungry.
I don't need to know what time itis.
And that was the kind ofthing.
I wanted to eliminate all my possibleexcuses, all my possibledistractions, because I knew how hard it was for me towrite.
I was begging when I waswriting,please, someone just call thephone.
Just please give me to do anything else besidesthis.
Butinstead, I unplugged the phone so that nobody couldcall.
I painted the windowsblack.
He says100% blackwindows, nophone.
And that approach of painting the windows black is a certain level ofintensity.
It doesn't do it all thetime, but he knew there was a time tosprint.
So one of the key things in life is to identify when a great opportunity comes your way or when it's time to buckledown.
This is themoment. It's you're going on one path or the otherpath.
And that is the time tosprint.
That is the time you dial up your level ofintensity.
So I have three actions foryou.
How do you actually go dothis?
First, you need to narrow yourfocus.
I did a whole podcast on this called laserfocus.
Go watchthat. It's like 20 minuteslong.
It'sgood. So you need to narrow yourfocus.
You need to stop giving your brain so many different priorities and so many different problems to thinkabout.
You need to narrow itdown.
That's the firstthing.
Focus. The second thing is you need to write down your commonsensesolution.
I call it a commonsense solution because that's thecheck.
Your solution to your problem should sound veryeasy.
It should sound as simple as I got to go figure out why all these people arechurning, canceling theirsubscription.
I need to go solve that or I need to bake betterproduct.
I need to make a product so good that people want to shareit.
That's mystrategy. Make a product so good that people want to shareit.
My strategy is I need to make 30 sales calls aday.
If I want sales togrow, I just need to do morecalls.
30 aday. I'm going to take a giantstick.
Youknow, I'm going to write 30 and every day I'm going to cross that 30out.
And then tomorrow I'm going to wakeup.
And the first thing I do is I write the big number 30again.
By theway, this is something I actually did for mycompanies.
Write a giant number on thewall.
And that number is the one thing I need to dotoday.
If I do that one thingalone, I have made todaysuccessful.
So you need a common sense strategy that you canexecute.
So like a no brainer fifth grader strategy that you can execute at a level12.
And that's the lastquestion.
The last thing you need to do is askyourself, what was what level 12 intensity look like at this thing that I'mdoing?
Just as a thoughtexperiment.
You don't even have to doit.
But just ask yourself thatquestion.
If I dialed the intensity knob all the way to12, what would that looklike?
What would I actuallydo?
I'll give you a very simpleexample.
A lot of people probably you out there listen to this have had a goal at some point time of getting a bettershape.
You want to loseweight.
You want to go run a marathon at a certaintime, whatever you want to get into your best shape yourlife.
And we've taken what we think is a level 10 intensity tothis.
I did the best I coulddo.
I hired a coach or I wrote down my goals and Itried.
It just didn't workout.
Well, Jesseisler. Guy's been a guest on thispodcast.
He had the same goals you he wanted to get in the best shape of hislife.
He wanted to get the best running shape of hislife.
So what did hedo? He hired a Navy seal to come live in his house and whoop his ass everyday.
Hesaid, I will do everything you tell me todo.
Whatever time you tell me to wakeup.
I wakeup. Whatever many miles you tell me torun.
I'llrun. He would train two to three times a day for 30 daysstraight.
He ate exactly what this guysaid.
He drank exactly what this guysaid.
He did pull ups when this guy said to pullups.
He ran with this guy saidrun.
It wasraining. It was hailingoutside.
It was freezingcold. He could get out there and he wouldrun.
That Navyseal, by theway, was DavidGoggins.
This is before David Goggins waspopular.
He hired David Goggins to come live in his house for 30days.
He would come into the bedroom where him and his wife were sleeping and wake him up andsay, wake upbitch.
We're runningnow. That was level 12intensity.
The sad part is we don't even know what level 12 looks like until we've heard something likethis.
If I did one thing for youtoday, I hope I just inspired you to go figure out what level 12 intensity even lookslike.
Maybe from the examples I gave youtoday, maybe from some people in yourlife, find a way to see it and find a way to ask yourself what does level 12 look like if I ratchet it up the intensity of the thing I'm alreadydoing.
