Positive but Constantly Looking for Things That Will Go Wrong with Steven Sashen

Welcome to this edition of the Million Dollar Mastermind podcast. This is where we pick the brains of high achievers from all walks of life and get their hard earned real world insights on winning. I'm your host, Larry Wydell.

I'm talking with Steven Sachin. And Steven is running one of the fastest growing companies, period. But especially in the shoe market, which you feel like is cluttered out there, but growing 50% a year and seems to be having a whole lot of fun while he's driving himself into the ground, working around the clock. But you know, it's, you know, people look at entrepreneurs, Stephen, and say, why do they work so hard? What in the world? You know, take a breath, you know, this, that and the other. And these are people that have never done anything, but there's a requirement. You know, it's easy for them to tell you, you know, because they're not doing anything and you make them uncomfortable. But the thing about, first of all, it does take a huge, a massive and insane amount of work to pull off new things because of a point that you made earlier. And that is where you were talking to your wife and you said, you're not supposed to know because when you wake up today and you're doing something new, things are going to pop up that you've got to deal with that there's no way you could know yesterday. And that's the thing about being an entrepreneur that I want to get out of people's minds. You're not going to read a book that's going to give you a formula that's going to tell you how to solve all the problems you're going to have today. And so you're going to have to think and you're going to learn to follow your, your own instincts, you know?

Well, and here's another one. There are a lot of people who have the idea that you have to have certain kinds of beliefs, you have to have certain kind of confidence, a certain kind of whatever. And I would argue that that's way upside down and that the thing that.

We'Re supposed to say. How would you say it?

Well, I'm constantly, I mean, look, I'm a very optimistic guy, but I'm continually just looking for the things that are going to go wrong and I do not have any. While I'm a provenly competent marketer, I know that no one bats a thousand. And every marketer that I know has brilliant ideas that lost them a shit ton of money and has horrible ideas that made them a fortune. So I just don't care what I think. All I care about is the reality. All I care about is the data. All I care about is the testing. And. And so this idea that you need to be confident. I'm confident in my ability to test things and see if I'm right or wrong. And I don't care. I tested an ad the other day that I thought was going to be brilliant, and it was the biggest failure I've had in quite a while. And I loved it because now I know not to go down that road any longer.

I've had a career in financial services, a lot of success, but I continually have, along the way, massive failures. You know, wasted $2 million on working round the clock on this one idea. Around the 2000, 1999, 2000 thing, you know, I'm in my pajamas working round the clock on the computer, you know, three days in a row, massive money. Turn my redesign, my whole house so I can bring in computer experts and this, that, the other. Yeah, right down the tank, you know, and then as you know, projects like that along the way. But I used to have a running joke with the CEO of the company who had come up through the ranks, and now he was CEO. And I used to say, john, once again, I proved myself. I can't do the business.

It's the financial biz is another one where people don't want to admit how little they can actually know and how much luck is a factor in what they do. This is actually a thing that I. Backing up to the beginning of our conversation. I would often ask people who were seemingly successful how much of it is something that you did versus luck, fate, chance, or things that are out of your control. And they, they get very animated about how much of it was luck, fate, chance, and things that are out of their control. And that's highly underappreciated or underestimated. My wife and I are very smart people, and I am 100 convinced that 90 of the reason we're here is luck, and the other 10% is also luck. And then. But that, that, working hard and being smart, that's a separate 100 where 90% of that is working your ass off and being. And the other 10 is hopefully being smart enough to put out the fire started.

Yeah. And you have to, you take. You have to take advantage of what you have in front of you and be on track. And what that does for you, though, that I would, I would say another side of that is that that puts you in the mindset and puts you position, position. You to where when luck, faith, things out of your control fall your way, which they will. You know, things. Things fall this way and that way.

As you go all the time.

You go through the forest, you know, the trees fall in every direction, depending on where they're weak and where the wind blows, you know, they don't all fall north and south, you know, and so it will fall your way. But the thing is, are you going to be. You know, it's like a wave in the ocean. If you're not on the surfboard and you're not paddling, you know, you see it coming, you're not really sure if that way. It was like catching a wave. You don't catch every wave, but, you know, you got to get. You got to get that thing and get yourself in position to where if it breaks just right, man, you can go in, but you got to create that initial momentum yourself. But that also turns your mind on your circuits in your subconscious. Like, pay attention to what's happening now. You know, there's something good may be coming your way.

Well, and then the next part is, if you do catch that wave, and I don't know if this analogy works for surfing, because I'm not a surfer, but I'm going to go back to your previous life and talk about traders. So the successful traders that I know, when they get into a trade, the first thing they start doing and the only thing they keep doing is look to see if they were wrong instead of look for proof. It's like. Because the only. Again, the only thing you can control is the risk. And people are always. When people. Again, like when people tell me, hey, I've got this thing that's going to make you a whole lot of money, I go, do you bet a thousand? They say no. I go, well, then I don't care. Let's find out if we can prove it first. And if it works, we'll scale it till it stops working. And if it doesn't work, I want out soon. And same thing. You know, I think about people that we've met that were wonderful, serendipitous connections that came into our business. And it's not like we were always looking to see if they were the right fit, but you have to. One of the biggest mistakes for both Lena and myself is because we're really optimistic people. We want to give everyone the benefit of the doubt. We want to see if they can grow. If they make mistakes, we want them to. We want to help them. And it's been very, very hard for us to learn to fire quickly when people. When. When the writing is on the wall rather than. And rather than trying to. And this is not like 100 thing. We don't just fire everybody quickly. I have a friend who does that. We don't do that. Nor do we give everyone. Do we not give people chances to grow? But we need to make sure that we're not being optimistic. The point of hurting the business. And we've done that a couple times and we know that's been a hard one. Lesson. Yeah.

And that's always going to come down to instincts and.

Well, sometimes it's easier. Sometimes. Sometimes someone does something illegal and you go and you're out of here. Other times, you know, you just have to look at it and, and make a decision that sometimes you're right, sometimes you're wrong. But, you know, you just got to find a way to move forward.

Yeah, that's true. And when you hear. I'm sure as you're successful, you know, people talk to you about winning and success and strategies and, you know, you've been in that world of launching strategies and everything. What do you. What's the biggest misconception you find people have or maybe you even had in the beginning?

That's an interesting question. Well, I have to back up by saying when people talk to me, this will be the third time I put the words success. Put the word success in air quotes. Quotes. I don't even have a frame of reference for that word. You know, our company is doing well. I can only give you public information because we did an equity crowdfunding raise. So in 2021, we did $33.6 million net. Some people think that's a lot of money. I used to think that was a lot of money. It's just some number with zeros at the end of it. Yeah, it has no meaning to me. The big I. I would guess the. This is not a misconception that I had, but the biggest misconception is that when you get to a certain level of something, then you will be happy. I mean, that's it. Because our brain is wired to try to think about some imagined future where we project that we will be happy. And the other problem with our brain, other than wasting its time doing that, is forgetting how bad we are at predicting what will make us happy. And the only thing worse than that is forgetting how bad we are at it. And even actually the thing worse than that is that if we met a million people who got the thing that we thought would make us happy and found out that none of them are any happier than they were before they got it or any happier than they are or than we are. For example, we still think that we're special and that if we got it, you know, oh, sure, I've heard that people who win the lottery are no happier a year later than before they won the lottery. Many of them are less happy. But if I won the lottery, right. So that whole misconception about how our brain is wired to try to project into the future and it's really, really bad and we forget how bad it is and we think that we're special if we unwind that, then we spend less time thinking about trying to get some to some particular place or thinking that when we. Because look, there's. I like to say that there. How do I want to say it? Success can be four times worse than failure. Because if you find that you got the thing you want and you're not happy, being unhappy is not fun. Having your hopes for happiness dashed is not fun. There's nowhere to go other than down from there. If you don't unwind the psychology of achievement, if you will, then you're going to be doomed no matter what. When I meet people who are in their 70s who say they can't stop working, I go, then you just haven't worked hard enough to find a hobby that doesn't take as much time because there's just no bonus points for, you know, dying in your office.

Yeah. Or it turns it in use is chasing an adventure is what I see.

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