MBA1423 Must Read: What You Do Is Who You Are by Ben Horowitz

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Today's must read is what yout Do Is who youo Are by Ben Horowitz. I absolutely loved this book. In fact, Ben Horowitz's first book, the Hard Thing About Hard Things is one of my favorite books, so it's a tough act to follow. But but this book is so timely for me and my business. Because what yout Do Is who youo Are is a book all about building your company culture. For many of us, company culture is a very nebulous thing. Does that mean free lunches and free massages at the office? That does it mean building great things in the company? Does it mean employee retention? What does it all mean? And how do you build that culture? Well, this book is probably the best guide I've seen. Not only because he gives practical advice from his own experience and great businesses that we know and love, but also he leans on stories from history, from people that he met, from the Haitian slave revolution to prison gangs to samurai culture, to businesses of the past and of course, the present. I can't wait to get into my favorite insights from this book. In today's lesson. I'll also try to extract these lessons, extract these insights and show you how they may apply to my own business or your business. And what are the next steps you need to take. So let's get into it. Let's get down to business. Before I get started on today's must read, what you do is who you are. I do want to recommend this book on Audible. The narrator for this book, the voiceover actor, is absolutely brilliant, one of the best I've ever heard. I listen to a lot of books. I picked up this book on Audible. I have an Audible subscription and this is a good book you can absorb in audio format. There's a lot of great stories, there's a lot of great pieces of advice and what you learn from the book, really, it lends itself to audio format. You can actually get this book for free with our special link on audible. Just go to 100mba.net audible Ben Horowitz is one of the founding members of one of the largest venture capital firms called Andreessen Horowitz. But this is not some rich guy that doesn't know anything about real world business. He's built and sold several successful businesses, two of his larger businesses, Loudcloud and Opsware, and he really goes into detail about his experiences through those businesses in his first book, the Hard Thing About Hard Things. This book, which is quite recent, just released it at the end of October, is all about building your business culture and establishing it. One of the things he establishes at the beginning of the book that I found really helpful is he says, hey, before we begin, understand your culture is not going to be perfect. Your culture will change. You might have a set of values and an intention for your culture, but it's not always going to be exactly what you want. Culture is dynamic. It's shaped by the people that live in that culture. And sometimes you will break your culture because it's what's best for the company. And this is one of the big insights I got from this book is that you have to have an established culture, a set of values that your company all kind of embodies. Everybody in your company understands this is what's important to us as a group of people. And 99% of the time, we are always following these values. But sometimes there's an exception to the rule, and it's only if it's for the best of the company. And he gives some examples. One being when his company was breaking up and he was gonna sell the hardware part of his company and keep the software. That deal he didn't want to make public to his team. Even though one of their core values is clear transparency. And they have a very transparent culture. They're honest with each other, they give feedback, and it's something that helps grow the team. But if he was going to be transparent about this, it would have caused a lot of damage to, one, the sale. It may have not allowed the sale to go through. Two, company morale. And it may have changed the way people perceive the company and several other factors he mentions. So when he did actually tell the company, hey, this is what's happening, People were shocked that they didn't know. But he said, hey, I gotta be open and honest with you now. This is why I couldn't tell you. And he clearly states why it was best for the business. So it kind of paints the picture that nobody's perfect, no culture's perfect, everybody makes mistakes. But what you want to do is avoid major mistakes or major cultural clashes in your business. A big, big lesson he conveys in this book is in order for you to really have a strong company culture and really have strong values, you have to embody those values. And really, that's how any company starts. The leader of the company, the founder of the company, the CEO, that person, their values really becomes the values of the company, becomes an extension. Because first it's just them or another person or a small team. The person that's leading is kind of imposing those values on people because, hey, this is their company, right? But the important thing is that you can't just talk a big game. You have to walk the talk. So if you say, this is what's important in our company and these are our values, but you do the opposite. Whatever that opposite is, that becomes the value, right? Whatever you do is really who you are. It's really what makes your culture. So make sure when you actually state your values, you have, you know, your vision and your mission and your value, your values for a company. Make sure you're being honest. If you can uphold these values, if you can live by those values every single day. He also gives some really good insights when things go wrong in your business. Because when things kind of are not perfect, that's when people start to see your mettle, start to see what you're worth and see what you believe in. So he actually gives you a formula. When a mistake happens, when something bad happens, bad news, somebody gets laid off, somebody gets fired, whatever it is, he gives you a three point formula. And I want to kind of share this with you because I found it incredibly helpful. Whenever I'm going through a difficult time or I have to convey difficult news to my team. The first step of this formula is just state the facts, don't and ah, don't sugarcoat it. He gives an example of when they had to lay off some employees because they didn't hit their quarterly target and just flat out says, hey guys, we had to let go of these 10 people. Unfortunately, because we didn't hit our quarterly target. A lot of people hide that information from their team. No, tell them why it happened. This is just the facts. This is business. This is what happens when we don't hit our numbers. This is not a threat. This is nothing like that. This is just what happened. You're just stating what happened. Honestly, you're just being an open book in front of your team. The second step is taking ownership of the situation, taking ownership of what happened and explain how you've learned from it and how it won't happen again or how you're going to improve. So in the example he gives, he says, hey, I'm taking ownership of this. I'm ultimately responsible for not hitting the numbers. I'm going to put in a new plan in place so we do hit the numbers. So we have a more of a staggered approach, a milestone approach to hit our numbers. The third step in this practice is letting the team know that the loss we just took is not going to just be in vain. It uses the metaphor of in a war. Like if you're in a war and you're fighting a war, when you have fallen soldiers, people that don't make it, that don't survive, it's very demoralizing for the rest of the army, for the rest of the team. And for you to just pretend that means nothing, it's not healthy. What you need to do is say, hey, these people didn't fall in vain. We're going to make up for it. We're going to make sure that the people that have been left behind, whatever they contributed to this business will be sought through this business will survive, and their contributions will have meaning. Why? Because you want to instill in your team that, hey, everybody matters here. Everything you do matters. And what we're doing is big and it's greater than the individuals here. And we're not going to let you know. This bad situation, this bad news, this rut we're in define us. We're going to overcome it and we're going to be proud of it. Love that formula. In the book, he also talks about some guidelines on when to fire somebody when they're not a good fit for your team, but also when you should try to keep them on board, how you can try to work around their issues to get the best out of them. When is that possible? When is it not? Another great insight in this book is all about incentives. We all have some sort of incentives in our company culture, whether it's implicit or explicit. We might have, you know, flat out incentives like, hey, if you sell X amount of units, you're going to get this bonus. So people are incentivized to sell, right? But the opposite is true. People can be discouraged. If you scold anybody when they come to you with a problem and you say, hey, if you bring me problems, bring me the solution. Don't bring a problem without a solution. Well, don't expect anybody to come with problems anymore because they're going to be like, hey, I might not have the solution.

A of lot.

A lot of people see a problem in front of them and they may not have a solution or they can't solve it themselves. Maybe somebody else on the team can, but it's not being voiced. If it's not being voiced or you're not encouraging them to voice it, then you're incentivizing them to, hey, be quiet. And problems will be dormant. And this was a huge lesson for me because, you know, growing a business, there are challenges. There are problems that come up and sometimes you get frustrated as the leader because you're always being served all these problems to solve and you're like, hey, I need your help, guys. If you have a problem, come with a solution. And that's just really out of frustration. But really what you should do and what he recommends is allow people just to voice, hey, these are my challenges. These are the problems I'm facing. This is what I think are some glaring issues in our product or offer. And it's not a complaining fest. It's a chance for people to voice their concerns and also a chance for everybody to brainstorm solutions and you can sort of manage that conversation. And what you'll find out is that oftentimes when you solve one problem that has, you know, come up, it solves a whole bunch of other problems with it. So be careful about what you incentivize and decentivize in your culture. Everything you do, everything you don't do, is being watched, is being observed by your team. So you gotta be very careful.

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What you do is who YOU are is a fantastic book and it's the reason why I listed it as one of my top five books of 2019. That episode aired a couple of weeks ago. Episode 1409. If you want to check out my other favorite books of the year. Ben Horowitz, thank you so much for writing such great books. Honest, straightforward and useful. And I'd like to add, very well researched. Thanks for listening to the Hundred Dollar Bajo. Pick up what YOU DO is who you are by Ben Horowitz. You will not be sorry. You may have some days off coming up because of the holidays. Treat yourself to a great book. Before I wrap up today's lesson, do me a favor and hit subscribe right now on whatever you listen to. To listen to podcasts, subscribe to the show and that way the podcast app will make sure that the next episode that's available is ready on your device as soon as it comes out. Also, share this show on social can you do that right now for me? Let others know you're listening to this podcast. This episode. Sharing is caring. Do it now before I go. I want to leave you with this. This book is really a mindset book masked as a how to book. And I really like it because you can listen to this book, you can read this book, and you can allow it to kind of sink in and think about it and see how you can apply to your own business. For me, at Webinar Ninja and the $100 MBA, I'm really trying to define our team, trying to define our culture. Really hone that in and really make sure everybody's singing from the same song sheet. There's incredible power and everybody's on the same page. You have so much momentum that gives you that competitive advantage. So invest in that. And that investment is reading a book pretty low cost. Love it. Thank you so much for listening and I'll check you in tomorrow's episode. I'll see you then. Take care.

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