Being lazy is good

What's up, everyone? This is Alex, the host of Founders Journal. As you may know, I built Morning Brew from my senior year of college until we sold the business in 2020. And now I'm building a variety of businesses in different spaces and different stages. I'm basically averaging 1 to 2 new businesses per year. And because of that, I have had the opportunity to test a ton of different products and services, ultimately landing on a core software stack that serves as my business operating system whenever I start a new company. I have my go-to banking service. I have my go-to formation service. I have my go-to domain hosting service. But probably the most important of them all is my HR service, Gusto. If you're a longtime Founders Journal listener, you know how much I think about people in the context of business. A business is nothing without its people, which means a platform that helps me manage and take care of my people is invaluable. And that means I've tried every HR platform under the sun, always with the same exact goals in mind. First, I want a product that's intuitive and delightful to use. As a non-HR person, I find the intricacies of payroll, benefits, taxes, compliance, and expenses to be painful. So I just want something that makes my life easier. Second, I want it to be affordable. I'm a bootstrapper at heart. I started Morning Brew with $0 and I started StoryArc with $0 as well, which means I don't have infinite dollars to drop on SaaS products. And third, I want a platform that acts as my one-stop shop for all things people. I want it to handle payroll, benefits, hiring, onboarding, and taxes, all while integrating with all of the other tools in my business stack, whether it be QuickBooks, Slack, or Google Workspace? Well, Gusto hit the trifecta, which is why I am a customer and use it for every single one of my businesses. Yes, this is a paid sponsorship by the amazing team at Gusto, but I would sing their praises even if I wasn't being paid to do so. So if you're looking for a platform that takes the pain out of payroll, benefits, and HR, I highly recommend you check out Gusto. And if you sign up at gusto.com/alex, you will get your first 3 months free. Now onto the episode.

What's up everyone? This is Alex Lieberman and this is Founders Journal. For those who are longtime Founders Journal listeners, welcome back. For those who are new to the show, here's the deal. Founders Journal is my audio diary made public for the world. My goal is to increase your odds of success as an entrepreneur by sharing the stories, lessons, and tactics that I experience as I build my businesses. You can expect the podcast Monday and Wednesday with episodes that are under 20 minutes in length. And if you want to get notified when a new episode comes out, make sure to subscribe wherever you listen. Today on the pod, I'm talking about my do-shit meter and my give-a-shit meter, why one has never been lower, the other's never been higher, and why I'm a more skillful entrepreneur because of it. Lastly, if you haven't yet introduced yourself, please do so. I love meeting my listeners and getting to know you all, so shoot me an email to alex@storyarb.com. That Alex at S T O R Y A R B dot com, saying hi, and I'll get the conversation going. Now let's get into it. If you don't know Jesse Pujji, you should. He sits atop my Mount Rushmore of entrepreneurs, and that Mount Rushmore is reserved for people who are A plus founders and A plus family people. Jesse built Ampush, a paid media agency that sold to Red Ventures for mid-eight figures. And then once he left Ampush, he started GatewayX, which is a venture studio that incubates new businesses and helps the CEOs of each one of these businesses reach their potential. Which is why any time I can chat with Jesse, I cherish it, because I find that every conversation leads to me snagging power-ups that I can add to my own toolkit as a founder. So a few years ago, I was on a podcast with Jesse and we were riffing about company building. I asked him how he spends his time these days, and he said something along the lines of, one of my businesses is fully up and running, so I spend about a day a week on it. The other one is in its infancy, so it takes more of my time. But honestly, I'm kind of lazy, so I try to delete or delegate as much as I can. And even though this conversation was a few years back, I can vividly remember my reaction to it. It kind of broke my brain because laziness and successful businesses aren't supposed to coexist. Or at least that's what the Twitter echo chamber taught me to believe. At first, I was judgmental. I thought to myself, how the hell can Jesse build multiple 8-figure businesses while being lazy? It's not possible. He either has to be full of shit and is secretly grinding behind the scenes, or his businesses must not be doing as well as he's saying. But I was wrong. As time went on, I too, as a second-time founder, found myself being lazy. I call it my do-shit meter. My do-shit meter just isn't what it used to be. In the early days of Morning Brew, if you asked me to do shit, I would just do it. No question asked. No thought about if the task was too small or too insignificant. Ask me to hop on a sales call. I just do shit. Ask me to train a college ambassador. I just do shit. Ask me to create a custom deck for an investor. I just do shit. My do shit meter was through the roof, and I assumed that was your only option as a founder. But then we sold Morning Brew, and I got lazy. Sitting on a few sales calls became agonizing. Creating a well-designed website when I spun up a new business felt like a waste of time. Getting on weekly meetings because they were in my calendar seemed idiotic. My do shit meter has never been lower. And yet I am a way better entrepreneur today than I was in 2015 when I was less lazy, because by being lazy and having a lower threshold for doing shit, I have started to treat my time more carefully. I don't just do shit for the sake of doing shit or because I think I have to in order to build a great business. My default response to doing something now is no, and it has to qualify to become a yes. It's like if my time is the Mona Lisa in the Louvre, security around the painting used to be a joke. Any Joe Schmo could stroll in, walk through the front doors like they own the place, high-five the front desk, walk into the Mona Lisa showroom, pull it off the wall, ask the gift shop for a bag to hold the painting, and walk out. Now that I'm lazy, I've got world-class security. You get to the front door of the Louvre, and you're met by my 7-foot-2 security guard who never smiles. He's sitting there, his arms are crossed, he's waving his big string bean finger back and forth, denying you from entering. This is the standard for how I treat my time now. Unless something feels mission critical for the business, it just gets a no. I'm too lazy to do it, and I also don't think it's worth wasting someone on my team's time. Then if my scary guard Boris lets you in, you still have to get through a labyrinth of moving laser beams that protect the Mona Lisa. For me, the laser beams are offshoring, automation, AI, and finally delegating to other employees that protect my time in that order. Employees are the last line of defense because I want to protect their time at all costs as well. So laziness is up, do shit meters down, which ironically means I've never spent my time more thoughtfully as an entrepreneur. But as my do shit meter has gone down, my give a shit meter has gone up, and my give a shit meter is the intensity by which I attack the things that actually matter in my business. Toby from Shopify put it so well on Lenny Rachitsky's podcast.

Every product in the world, the quality at the end of the day is simply a reflection of how much the people who created it gave a shit about the product. And it is not possible to make great products if the people who work on it do not give a shit about the product. And I actually think this is a very important role for product leaders to make sure that the team gives a shit. And I think this is something that can be done with building empathy for people using it, but also it can be done infectiously by the product leader. The product leader has to give a shit. Do not engage in product work on products that you don't care about because you cannot produce the thing that the person who gave you the task is looking for. And I think that's, this is like, this just kind of, again, it so much goes into this. unquantifiable conversation, which we already had. But boy, is that important because it just isn't about the brief document. Like, it isn't about aligning stakeholders. It isn't— sometimes in some places, some of those things are aspects of it. And I think they correlate sometimes with people, but I think the higher order bit is if you are in product, you have basically free roads. You have to have the team sit, look around corners that they don't see. You just have to understand this thing that's being done better than everyone else because that's the role. Now, you don't have to do this by yourself. Everyone on the team is a resource to you and you can query them and therefore determine what is around the corners and so on. But in engineering and UX and so on, But that's really important. The second is like, you've got to be exothermically infectious with like actually caring about this thing because just that one thing alone will make a 10 times better product. It's crazy how much of a change this makes.

Tobi talks about giving a shit as a product leader, specifically with the product you have ownership over. But I think it really extends to every corner of a startup. How much you give a shit about your work as a founder or leader, I believe, is one of the highest correlation attributes to create something that people love and build a great business. And as I think about the best people I've ever hired, they have all given a ton of shits. They were high agency. They obsessed over the thing we were building. They took pride in their work and gave a shit about the quality of everything they did, how well they pitched Morning Brew on a sales call, how well-written the playbook for a StoryArc client was, How high skill and well-trained the growth pair employee we paired with a client was, how good and thoughtful our creator strategy we gave to a B2B partner was. The best people I've ever worked with have a give-a-shit meter that is through the roof. And that is why it is so important for me to give a ton of shits, because like Toby says, giving a shit is infectious. If I have a crazy high standard for the work that matters, if I have an uncomfortable amount of urgency and try to maintain speed and momentum at all costs, if I proactively identify any cracks that can jeopardize the standard of our work or the stability of our business, I know that I will have a high-functioning give-a-shit meter. And if my give-a-shit meter is high, my team's will be high as well. But the opposite is also true, which makes having a correctly calibrated give-a-shit meter just as important. If I am reactive, not proactive, if I do things when people ask, not before they ask, if I wait for things to go wrong rather than defuse them before they go wrong, if I am anything less than a long-term perfectionist with the product we we provide to our customers, our company's give-a-shit meter will be a reflection of our team's give-a-shit meter, which will be a reflection of mine, and mine won't be nearly high enough to set us up for success. So I invite you to embrace 2 ideas that feel at odds at first, but really work in concert. First, set your do-shit meter as low as humanly possible. Protect your time like the Mona Lisa in the Louvre, guarded by Boris and laser beams, and only do things that are actually truly mission critical to the business require you to push them forward specifically. But with those things that are worthy of your time, attack them with an enthusiasm and standard unknown to mankind. Calibrate your give-a-shit meter to the highest level. Perform regular maintenance to make sure it stays high and empower your team through your actions to give a shit company-wide. That is it for today's Founder's Journal. Shoot me an email to alex@storyarb.com saying hi, hola, what's up, or whatever takes you less than 10 seconds and I will get the conversation going. I love getting to know my listeners so I can make this show as valuable as humanly possible for you. Thanks again for listening, and I'll catch you next episode.