The Divine Lever | w/ Rob Snyder

Hello, Rob. Welcome back.

Hello.

Hello. How's it going?

Good. Good. Just back from a trip to Buffalo, a quick, like 48-hour round trip to, to give a little talk on this kind of stuff. So it was fun.

What were you, what were you talking about?

Um, so I did a talk about, I guess, product market fit for this accelerator called 43North. That's all about bringing startups to Buffalo. It was really cool.

Yeah, that's an interesting, uh, interesting opportunity for like working with local Oregon, like community that's trying to invest in attracting entrepreneurs and then, uh, I guess like bringing you in to have a conversation about how they can design locally or like what's the impetus for that?

Yeah, I dunno. They, they have this like pitch competition type thing. Um, and so they had me come and give a talk. At it. And I think, I honestly don't know why they asked me. I think they just saw that I'm a Bills fan and they're like, well, Bills fan and like startups. And so like, why not, why not bring them in? And so that was good. But I did, I did learn that I am getting old on this trip. Like I had my like first real experience of, of, oh, I'm, I'm actually, I am no spring chicken anymore on this trip.

And it was, what happened?

Yeah, it was, so, well, very weird story. So, so they had all these kind of like events and you're invited to all of them, but I really wanted chicken wings. And so I left the events to go eat chicken wings by myself. And that's not, that's, that's actually probably my normal operating method, but the problem was I can't eat 20 chicken wings anymore in a sitting. Apparently I can't just, I just can't take 20 to the house. And at like 15, I was like, Oh man, I might get sick alone in this restaurant at 4:00 PM on a Wednesday or whatever it was.

And so did you power through the other 5 or did you abandon?

No, that's probably like the first time in my life I abandoned, right?

Like, wow.

I should have just kind of like waited and, and, you know, been a man about it. But it was, it was just honestly embarrassing. And so I recount that at the beginning of this., for no reason other than to make myself feel terrible.

Yeah. Uh, well, you're— we'll get into the concept of a Divine Lover. I was under the impression that your Divine Lover had something to do with downing obscene amounts of chicken wings, but, um, well, hey, I'm excited. Like, honestly, a little bit nervous about, uh, about this one. Um, so we're, we're talking today about your newsletter, The Divine Lover, and I'm nervous because I think it's important and I don't I think you write a lot of very good, very insightful, interesting things. And this one strikes me like there's— it makes me feel a little bit silly talking about this, but it's like this one strikes like the spiritual balance and drive behind vocation, behind entrepreneurship, you know? And so I hope I'm able to help do it justice in bringing it to light. But why don't you give a little bit of the context, Rob, on what's been on your mind with this one?

Yeah. And I think we should just also give a PSA, which is like, if you are listening to this and you're like, cool, I'm gonna get some practical tips for sales, like just stop listening right now. Like this, this is not that one. This, uh, the context of this is that this has been a topic that has just been eating me alive. I, I can barely be a functioning human being until I press send on this newsletter and get the topic just out of my backlog, out of my drafts, out of my brain. For a moment. And so the topic here is like a, the, what I think of as the most zoomed out way to look at a business and, and the physics of a business. And so because it is so zoomed out, this is gonna be a fairly abstract concept that if you're just like, listen, I need to close 5 customers this month. come back to this on a weekend or, you know, whenever, whenever you got some space to, to think about things. Uh, cause, cause this is really about the, like, uh, what causes you to focus on demand and build an awesome business.

Yeah. Yeah. Very foundational. I would, I would say there are some practical ramifications of it, like the, uh, the motivation part, like why we do what we do. And, you know, you write in this one about how having that— this kind of divine lever, which we'll talk about here in a moment, changes the way that you design your business. It changes the way that you operate your business. It changes the way that some of the decisions that you make around it. So I do think there— it's, it's not just an observation about, you know, this isn't just This isn't poetry. Um, it like, there, there are consequences for, um, for entrepreneurs, but yes, uh, agreed on the, this is, this is very different from here's the pipeline post to end all pipeline posts.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally. And, and so like, uh, I, I've basically written, rewritten this probably 6, 7, 8 times. I, I, I don't know, over the past couple months and like, and I don't know what the right point to jump into this is for, for me. There, there's a couple different ones. I've been, I've been like reading a ton of books to try to like frame this in different ways. What I've just found, so we talk here a lot about demand, like that's, that's kind of like the core foundational concept of business that we're just not taught in school. And it's this, this missing load-bearing thing that explains why products are bought or not bought. It kind of tells you how to sell products and right, like it, it explains the physics of startups. It's just the missing concept in, in, in business. And what I've found is that it's actually like, you can intellectually understand that demand is this causal force and that it is the most important thing and that a business is just here to serve demand. You can understand that intellectually, but putting it into practice in every minute of every day is very hard and it's hard because it is like in every moment you kind of have to choose between serving demands, like what is in customers' best interest? How do we actually focus on what they're trying to do versus like serving ourselves? What are my goals? What do I want to do? What do I like? How do I want to be seen? And the difference there is like what prevents that kind of like self-centered focus is what in every minute prevents you from focusing on demand, serving demand. And so digging into why that is so hard and, and like, what do you do about that? That led me to this concept today.

Yeah. And let's, why don't we start there with kind of the, what entrepreneurship is like, what your observations about the entrepreneurial environment, how like the mindset that just kind of permeates through, you know, that from starting a business to fundraising, like through the basically like the whole thing, you know, it's, it's what's taught in business, business schools. Like we could talk about shareholder primacy, like there's, there's a bunch of different elements to this, but what do you observe before we get into a demand-focused approach to business? Like what is the, what is the status quo?

Yeah. So, so the way to understand the status quo is I think from what we talked about a couple weeks ago, which is the operating philosophy, right? And, and if, if you don't remember that, the operating philosophy of a person is like how they believe the world works. As revealed by what they do. So it's basically look at your calendar and tell me what you believe based off of that about yourself and your role. Okay, cool. So if we, if we assume that everybody has an op— well, everybody by definition has an operating philosophy because we do stuff with our time or we don't do stuff. And all of those create an operating philosophy. They, they reflect, reveal. An operating philosophy. So if we look at the average entrepreneur's operating philosophy, what does, like, what is it? And what I've seen is that like mostly it is, um, it reveals a kind of self-centeredness that is focused on, I want to get my goals. I want to look impressive. This is what leads to the LARPing we've talked about. It's what leads people to spend a ton of time at pitch competitions. And things that aren't pushing the business forward. It's what, what kind of like causes us to focus on vanity metrics and, oh wow, I got, you know, 0 to 1 million ARR in X amount of time without referencing the fact that we have like 90% churn, right? Like these, it's, it's the, all of these things are kind of focused on the self-centered side of things versus the serving demand side of things.

Hmm. Yeah. And, um, on, on that, I wrestle a little bit with how do we avoid being martyrs or trying to be saints? Like the goal when I have, as I've interacted with your idea of demand, it's like the objective or the, the really critical part of demand and the way that it ties to this like service element that you're exploring in this, um, in this, this newsletter. Is that there's— it's like the purpose of the business is to serve the customers. And in serving the customers, you create things that are more interesting, more valuable for them as a result. And so it's— there's kind of this like virtuous cycle is how I think of it between the two. Is that a fair characteristic, Rob?

Yeah, I think— I think of it as you can look at your— at any one point in time, You can look at your business or your to-do list or whatever through basically a demand lens, which says, I am primarily focused on what customers are trying to achieve and fitting that, amplifying their force, helping them make progress. Or you cannot. And when you don't look at it through that lens, then you're gonna look at it through a typical, just like a typical lens of, well, What am I trying to accomplish here? What are my goals? What do I want to happen? Right. And, and the, it's like, think of it as a lens that you can apply. And, and so to me, it's, there's not something about kind of like this, this post can come off as like super moralizing and I don't want it to be, it might be that. But it's, it's really about like in any one moment, if I'm focused primarily on my own goals, what's going to happen? It's basically, I'm probably going to prioritize the wrong thing. And I'm probably going to approach that thing in the wrong way because it's all about kind of what I want versus, right, customers have force that they are applying. And if I look at my business as something that's designed around that force, right, that's, that's me looking at it through a demand lens. What I'm gonna do is I'm going to help them apply their force better. And I'm gonna, I'm gonna focus on the thing that is the current bottleneck to their force being applied to the, the thing that's, and I'm gonna approach it from a way that is primarily about helping them apply their force better versus coming to it from the angle of what do I want? What do, what's my goal? Right. And, and so my argument is that coming at it from a demand side, from like, from the demand lens is just better. Like it leads to better outcomes. We, this isn't kumbaya bullshit where it's like, where it's like everyone should, right? Like care about each other. Like, I don't care. Like this is about be like, there's kind of a selfishness on the demand side of like, it actually just works better.

Yeah. Yeah. I'm going to, I'm probably going to bookmark this. This newsletter and read it anytime I get angry. Like, it's actually, it was on Friday I had a, or last week I had something that I thought was gonna turn into a sale. And then I got an email from this potential customer CCing like a bunch of random people I had never met being like, that was really interesting, but also not only do we not wanna buy from you, but we want you to pay us for something. And which is like kind of irrelevant to my business or our success. And that just sent me into like a 3-day rage, basically, that I had.

I'm—

my girlfriend, I'm sure, had the worst possible dinner that night with me as I like could not think straight and was mad at everything in the world. And then I, you know, I woke up this morning and I read the— I read this piece and I was like, okay, another way of thinking about this is what are they like? What is going on that that is the— like that their priority? Like, how do I better understand what they're trying to achieve right now? And when I took that, took that framing to the situation, I was like, okay, kind of like just helped me chill out a little bit. My pride, which was severely wounded, was able to just like go back into its place and I was able to interpret it more calmly. Yeah.

Do they have demand or do they want to be served? Right. Like, and yeah, they throw that Uno reverse card at you and you just like, what?

Yeah. Yeah. Well, why don't we— we've probably gone too far without actually defining the subject of this. I'm going to share my screen. So this one, the title of the post is The Divine Lover. Rob, why don't you help us understand those, those two parts to it? And there's a— there's that for those who are either watching on Spotify or YouTube, I'm pulling up a diagram. If you're listening on a platform or if you're on Apple or something like that, you can just pull up—

we'll link to the blog post. You can pull this up.

Anyways, Rob, why don't you, why don't you talk us through this? Yeah.

So, okay. So the way to understand a divine lever is that it is a causal lever. And so we understand, like, you've heard of a growth lever, right? Like a growth lever is something that you do that causes your business to grow. Okay, cool. A divine lever is a kind of causal lever that causes your business to work, but it is more than that. The word divine is a weird word to include in a business post, but, uh, it, that part is actually like super important. I've found divine means it basically is objectively good. It is, it is purely good. It is, it purely deeply serves demand with zero of that kind of like self-centeredness attached to it. And so when you combine those two things, it is, it is a thing that causes our business to work that is objectively good on the demand side. When we focus on this thing, there are a lot of benefits we get out of it. If you just think of a causal lever, it's like, okay, cool. I found the thing that I can focus on that just makes my business work. But because, and we'll get into this in, in a second, but because of the divine element, because of the purity of it, of, of like, it just genuinely objectively serves customers and is an objective good thing. You get a lot of other benefits from it as well on the personal side, on the business shape side, on the differentiation side. And so, yeah, we can get to those in a second, but did that explain a divine lever decently?

Yeah. Why don't we, why don't we take on that concept of divine real quick. Divine does not, as I'm gonna take a shot at this, Rob, divine does not mean that it has to be like, you know, you're taking a vow of poverty and, you know, serving abandoned cats in Istanbul or something like that. It's, in this case, divine is there is something valuable that people are trying to accomplish that you are helping them to accomplish. Or, but it's, there's something else there that I think I'm not, I'm not quite capturing. Help us understand how does, let's go with B2B SaaS. How does divine apply to B2B SaaS?

Yeah. So think of something that is objectively good, that would be objectively good even if it didn't make your business work. And so like that, that's the way I think of, of divine. And so it could be that like there's,, you know, it's hard to come up with like examples of this, but, but like, um, there's a software product called Linear, which is basically a different form of Jira, way, way better form of Jira. And, uh, I don't know if you know Jira, it's basically like for managing product development, like a, a kind of product development management tool. And, and so what they focus on at, at Linear, from the best of my understanding, is they are obsessed with craft and quality. Like, how do we create an experience of like project management, product management that gives people more energy because the experience as delivered by our software is like so perfect, right? And, and that to me, there's some element there of a kind of like above and beyond focus on quality that is a, it's an objective good, even if it didn't make the business work. It just happens to make their business work, make their product awesome. And so that's, yeah, that's how I'm kind of grappling with this. And I also should say, I'm, this is like V1 of a topic that I'll probably write about a lot more in like 5 years as I've figured it out more. But like that, this is my, um, that's, that's kind of like my articulation of it. We can even use it. So in my example here of what we're doing here, like there is no reason, like no business logical reason for me to create this Miro board with all of my frameworks and record a podcast that 4 people are going to listen to and like obsess to this level about how and why startups work and just kind of give it all away. There's just like, no, I should, I should be gatekeeping. Like I get so many messages that are like, why are you doing this? This is, this is insane. What do you mean? Like, why do you do? And it's because this, like, pushing on this lever is just an objectively good thing to do. It is just, it's an object— it helps entrepreneurs make progress. Even if it didn't make my business work, it would be an objective good thing to do. And, and so, and, and then we'll talk about the other benefits that accrue to this, but By focusing on that, my business just happens to work, but if it didn't work, it would still be a good thing to do.

Do you think that's always the case, Ram? And you know, the way that you, you talked about this, I think I mentioned this at a previous podcast, um, early on you were like, should this be a nonprofit? Was like how you, you were like, the thing I exist to do is serving founders. Basically, you're like the, the whole system doesn't, work, like, and you were thinking about your business model or your tax structure or whatever at the time, and it was like that service mindset entrepreneurs was like the seed, I would say, that has grown in interesting directions. But does it, maybe back to the question, does it always result that, do you think, or, you know, as you're developing this idea and that your current state, do you think it's always the case that becomes something that's valuable financially or sustainable financially?

No, no, no. So, so there's many objectively good things that you can do that are not levers. It's, and so the, the kind of like, what are you looking for here? It's, you're still like, again, this isn't kumbaya bullshit. This is like, I am understanding the physics of my business. And as I'm doing that, I'm getting increasing clarity on what is demand and what is the kind of infinite game approach to serving demand. This lever that I can just keep pushing on with all of my might that makes everything work and means I don't have to actually focus on most, most of the stuff downstream. Like it just makes all the stuff work.

Hmm. Oh, that's interesting. I think I had, even before this conversation, underappreciated the connection between the two. So it's, it's not that the— I, I think the divine part does create something that is intrinsically valuable over time, and it gives you patience during the unfolding process of it. Like, what become— like, producing something that is good for the sake of it being good is a valuable approach to creating things. But the combination of the two, the intersection between that kind of divine aspect to it and the causal element. So how would, how would you say, let's talk a little bit more about the causal lever, lever part of it. Help us. Can you define that more? And then how do people identify when something is a causal lever?

Yeah. So just a causal lever in general is if I focus on X, it causes Y, right? And so it's, and so basically I don't know, you could think of like private equity as being very good at focusing on causal levers, right? They're like, they go in and they're like, hmm, well, it seems like if we just invest in this marketing channel, it works to drive revenue. Let's stop investing in others and just go in on this, right? That is an example of focusing on a causal lever. As applied to like the marketing spend. And there are causal levers kind of like everywhere in business. There's this book called Growth Levers. There's, yeah, I mean, it's just like we're always trying to figure out what should I do so that I can get the outcome I want. But like we can, we can view that at kind of like any level of scale, I'll say. So we can think of that as like, what is the causal lever to get people to visit my website? That's one level. We can view it as what's the causal lever that's going to like power my business, right? Which is demand. And then like zoom out one more level and say, what's the causal lever such that if I focus on it, my business just works and I get more energy and like, oh, that's the divine lever.

Let's talk for a second, Rob, about what happens when you miss either side of this, like when it's not a causal lever or when it's not divine, maybe we start with when you're focusing on something that's not a causal lever?

Yeah. When you're focused, so when you're pushing on something that is not a causal lever, like you get nothing out of it. You like, you know, you might kind of, I don't know. I think of it as like writing the best book that's ever been written, but nobody reads it. Right. Like it's, it's, you're doing something that is good for the world or good, like objectively good., but it just doesn't, it like nothing happens as a result of it. You just kind of get like, cool, nice. You, you feel good for a moment and then like, okay, I need to go make money. Like I need to get a job or something like that. So that's, that's kind of like when you're focused on something that is not a causal lever, it just, it, you push on it, nothing happens.

Hmm. And on the other side of that, the, divine peace.

This is the, yeah, this is the interesting one. So, so my argument on the, the point of focusing on causal levers that are not objective goods is that basically, I had to like write this out mathematically to just like try to actually understand it. Do you remember the Clay Christensen quote where it was, It's easier to focus on something, or it's easier to keep a promise 100% of the time than 99% of the time or something like that. Right? Like, that's the concept here, which is, it's easier to focus on an objective good than it is to focus on something that's a mix of objective and, and like selfish. Right? And so the, the, the function I, what I observed in myself was that For example, when, when kind of like writing a blog post, if I have mixed motives in it, if I'm, you know, 90% focused on helping people, 10% focused on helping myself in it, the blog post doesn't come out good. And, and it's because in every moment I kind of make that trade-off. And so I wrote that out as a decay function where it's basically like the quality of output is 1 minus x to the n, or 1 minus x raised to time. You're a math major, so you could probably explain this better than me. But, but basically it's any percent of self-centeredness in that equation over time leads quality to zero. And I think that's why the concept of the objective good and the divine actually has to fit in here because it has to be 0% self-centeredness, Otherwise the, the like quality goes to zero. Hmm.

Yeah. I feel that the, the thing I think about as a founder, um, with this is it's almost like I need something that's pure in order to come back to, because there's an inevitable drift away, away from that. And if it's, if there's a reminder that's more grounded in something that's not tainted or that's, you know, that doesn't feel impure, then I can redirect over time. It's not that I'm, it's pure 100% of the time while I'm focused on it, but there's always something to come back to there.

I think, I think that's a good way to frame it. And I think like this is, this concept sucks. It's just been like killing me. It's just been eating my brain a lot. One of the, one of the other, so Well, what I feel like we're doing is we're just trying to explain it by like coming at different angles of it. The post is doing the same thing. It's still not well-shaped. It's fine, but we're, we're like pushing. But like one example of this is just let's, let's move ourselves out of the business context for a second and think about relationships, right? This rule very deeply applies in relationships where you can tell if somebody is being selfish in a relationship, any percent. Selfish in a relationship and that, that like quickly degrades. And so I do think like what I've found in relationships is like being as, as much as possible being aware of when you have some sort of, some form of self-centeredness in it and like realizing that that is something that kind of ruins everything and, and kind of go like angling towards the objective good is a thing that we all should be trying to do in relationship with that, that I'm actively trying to do in my relationships. And so that it, like, it makes kind of intuitive sense in a relationship context. And we just have to kind of port that over to, okay, but this actually is the most zoomed out version of, of like how business works.

Hmm. Yeah. And it, and it requires overcoming a cynical view of transactions, um, between customers and providers or You know, what you're, what you're trying to extract from, from customers. Like, I don't, I, there's a, there's a little piece here that's around, okay, what do I do with the financial element of, of this? I don't know if you have thoughts on that, Rob. Yeah.

So like, I was also, the absence of this concept is I think what causes everybody to be unhappy at work. Causes all of the, like, people who are throwing, like, uh, you know, rocks at capitalism. Like, I think it causes that to happen. I think the absence of this concept is upstream of a lot of things that are wrong. And so, like, when you are focused on serving demand and, like, truly serving demand, it does not do customers any good if you go out of business and can't serve them anymore. So like you have to make money as a result of that and you should charge what is fair for, for helping them accomplish what they're, they need to accomplish. That, that like it even them spending money on something is not like, can't think of that as necessarily like a, they're giving, you're taking. Kind of thing. It's, it's a kind of like, it's, uh, it's more than that. Like they are signaling their seriousness about accomplishing the project by paying. They are signaling that they value your support in helping them get there. Right? Like there's, there's all these things where, yeah, you can look at a transaction and be like, oh, it's purely extractive, but that's not how, like, that's not the reason why capitalism has led or like why the past 250 years have gone like this in terms of material wellbeing, there is positive sum in transactions.

Yeah. Yeah. Totally agree with that. Maybe one thing real quick, Rob, to clarify is this isn't the only way that, or that I'm going to postulate this. This isn't the only way that businesses can work. It's not the, like, it's probably not even the dominant way. It is. Is the right way to understand this as a philosophy that founders can take and that you would say is the right philosophy to take as a founder to developing products, appro— you know, approaching demand? Yeah.

So I, I think that's right. Like, there are many philosophies you can have to building a business. I would say that this is the most true one, uh, in, in the, in the sense of it is the thing that you do that has, that like makes your business work and causes a lot of other downstream kind of like unexpected consequences for your business that we can get to in a second. But there are plenty of other operating philosophies you can embody and be successful, right? Like you can do the kind of like, I'm gonna be Machiavellian and just run over everybody. Right. That is a totally valid approach. What I've found just kind of like testing all these different ones is that, uh, and like just trying to, trying to like actually make them happen is there is, there, uh, I've met a lot of people who have been very successful with exits, with public company, with, with all these things. And the ones who don't feel dead inside have taken an approach like this. And I like, and so I have also just like tried to build companies before. I've, I've even had companies that have like grown very fast before and it feels hollow unless you are focused on this.

Yeah. I, the romantic part of me, it keeps, uh, is pulled back to the almost the artisanship of entrepreneurship that it feels like is imbued in this. Um, Rob, why don't we talk a little bit about non-obvious outcomes of this one?

Yeah. So, so if it was basically just you're focused on something that is objectively good and it causes your business to work, that's, that's fine. Right? Like those things are fine. What, what I've found exploring this concept and like comparing and contrasting how I am operating now versus maybe how I was operating 2 years ago, 3 years ago. I've been, I've been kind of uncovering this concept for like the last 2, 3 years as I've been trying to build something meaningful. And maybe, maybe this will also like help you make sense of me more as like, because you've been frustrated or you've, you've seen me and just like are scratching, what the heck is this guy doing? So I've found some, that there are some non-obvious benefits to this, which are that like, first of all, when you focus on something that is objectively good, you get energy from that. Most other things you give, you expend energy, right? When you're focused on something that is selfish, unless you are a kind of like, you know, certain kind of personality, right? It feels like you are expending energy and when it doesn't work, you feel bad, right? And it's just, it's kind of like you, your battery, It, you, you have batteries and they need recharging, right? When you're focused on something that is objectively good, that does not happen. It gives you more energy, which is why I can obsess over this topic for so long and just run through the like Zero to One sucks problem nonstop and just obsess over it forever. It's just, it, it, You get a ton of energy. I'll pause it. Questions on that one and then we can jump to the others.

I think that one resonates with, with me. I, I, another way of interpreting that for me is like you're willing to put up with more because you believe in something. Like you can sit longer with the questions, like you do things harder and that other people would give up faster on if you were motivated by something that was other than like an intrinsic good or something that you, like, you believed in so deeply. Yeah.

Yeah. Like, like the concept of an objective good. It is just an objective good. It will cause you to run through walls. It's, it's like it pulls you. It's what pulls you, right? The same way that customer demands pulls a product into existence, right? The divine lever pulls you to do whatever it takes.

Mm-hmm.

And like get more excited as you do the difficult things.

Yeah. Let's get into, uh, additional ones, other non-intuitive outcomes.

Yeah. So, okay. So what I've realized is that this divine lever, this thing that you apply your effort to is a global optimizing function for your business, by which I mean, um, my business is very weird. No, it is very strange. It doesn't, we don't really have a website, right? Like, and, and like most of the things I do to make money don't make sense as, as like ways to try if you were maximizing revenue, but because like, and so what I found is that the divine lever is something that shapes your business to be a globally optimal fit for demand. Over the long term, like in the short term and in the long term over kind of like all time scales. So you can just kind of keep running at the lever and it causes your business to take a shape underneath that, that is confusing, weird to other, to like traditional business thinkers. Like any, any of our MBA friends looking at my business would be like, I have 470 things you should be doing differently. And they're wrong, right? Well, they're right in some sense, but they're wrong in this global sense. And so that, and so what it does is it creates a shape of a business that is totally differentiated from anything else. You make a set of choices based on the lever that are basically not, not even comprehensible to somebody who is just thinking about kind of like causal levers.

That I was, while I was reading about this, Rob, does that, and having watched your business as well, It feels like potentially one consequence of taking this kind of global optimum intrinsic good causal lever approach is that you might need to be more patient with profitability or with understanding exactly because you're more willing to rewrite the playbook and throw out the conventional wisdom on this is how everybody else has approached this type of business. Therefore, I need to do that. Where that is actually that the reason that they're built that way is that might actually be the more financially immediately responsive route to go. Is that, is that fair? Or how do you think about this? Is there maybe, I think what I'm getting at here is what is the cost of, of taking this approach? Hmm.

Yeah. So it might take longer, honestly. I think so. I think I've been just like very unwilling to do anything like things I don't believe are in line with this thing as it, as it like comes into view for me. I think you can, I actually think you can do like, you can just build a normal business following most of the normal physics while kind of like looking for a divine lever, which then kind of like reshapes your business. So I don't know if that's necessarily the thing. I think the kind of the, the thing that it actually costs you is that you, uh, you no longer become intelligible to other people. Like what you do doesn't make sense to other people and you can't, it's hard for you to explain it to others. And so this is, this is part of the reason why I've kept my business tiny because I can't explain why I'm doing what I'm doing in a good way. It's taken me so long to come to this articulation of it. It, it's, um, and then you kind of like, so I, I get more frustrated now with other businesses and with people who I don't, I don't see as like reaching for this, even like having a bar, right? Like all the, like you see how angry I get about kind of LARPing startups and about like all the grifters and, and stuff in, in this world and, and about you know, about academics who are kind of pushing forward things that sound right but don't actually work. It's, it's kind of like, because yeah, so I guess you probably become less nice at a dinner table.

Yeah. I, I, as somebody who I would say is like closer on the divide side than on the causal side with, with what I'm building, I find that I'll say what I do. And I feel a little bit embarrassed about it. And then they'll repeat it back at to me and totally not get it. Like, and I'll just, we'll just, I'll just move on quickly. It's like, this is just not worth even trying to, to communicate.

But what, what, like, so let's, let's focus your experience working with me, right? On, on this has been probably frustrating for you in terms of like the list of things I just won't do that makes sense.

Yeah. Yeah. Um, and at this, yeah, I think early on I had to learn how to work with you, um, because you thought so differently. Um, it was like there were certain revenue arms that you weren't willing to pull on, certain like marketing tactics that would be a no-brainer given the kind of content that you were producing that you weren't willing to do. And it was, it was mostly because you didn't feel it was, I, I'd say like there was a lot that was intuitive. It was like you, you knew the feel for the business that you wanted to build and you weren't willing to sacrifice on that. And so maybe even like before having some of this language to talk about it, you just, it was like your gut was kind of leading you in the direction of this is the kind of thing that I want to build. That's worth like your time and your energy and your life. It wasn't, it wasn't always and almost never was, how do I make the most money out of this? It was, it was more like, what is— I don't know. Yeah. Like what's worthy of your time or focus or what? Yeah. What do you feel good about? Yeah.

I feel like I remember a couple of months ago I was like, oh, I finally get it right. Like if I just keep pushing forward on this theory, everything else works right. And that at that moment, it was like everything kind of crystallized for me. And then this concept kind of like was able to be more legible out of that. Yeah. And like, basically, so that's, I don't check any of the metrics on anything. Like I don't, I've never seen our listener metrics. I couldn't tell you any of the other metrics in the business. I can't tell you how much like revenue we make. I can't tell you anything like that. And it's just because like, I just want to focus on this thing. And I know that everything else, like the scoreboard will work itself out.

Yeah. And on that note, it doesn't mean that those things aren't important. Like I do some of like some— I watch the metrics, like there's things that I'm doing on the back end or even like with our business, like I watch the metrics and I don't think that's— tell me if I'm wrong, Rob. I don't think you're saying nothing in the business matters operationally. What you're saying is like the most important thing became obvious to you and that's what you focus on.

And I view it as not worth my— like, I view it as I can focus on this thing that gives me energy and makes my business work.

Yeah.

Or I could focus on other things that don't do that. I'm just pressing this button all day long.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Rob, other things that we want, we've got a couple mailbags that we might get to if we've, if we've got a moment. Are there other things on Divine Lover that we want to hit first though?

Yeah. I think like the, The zooming out section of the newsletter is super important. We're not gonna get it, get to it in detail here, but I do think that this concept, the, the missing nature of this objective good lever is upstream of most of what we hate about business, what we hate about the built world. Just, it's, it is the, it's a concept that once existed and explains why things were different in the past in, in certain ways that we like and things feel cheaper now, it'll, or kind of things feel more hollow now. And so, uh, yeah, I, I, yeah, I think this is like, I do think this is a really, really important concept and I worry that calling it a divine, I just couldn't find another word other than divine that worked. And so I feel like this is going to be one of those concepts that everyone's like, Cool. That was an interesting read for a Saturday. Catch you later. Right? Like kind of thing versus there is something, there is something load-bearing here. And so please, if you're, if you listen this far and you're like, okay, this, this kind of makes sense, but kind of doesn't, please reach out. Cause I'm trying to sharpen this. I think it's important. Or you can tell me it's full of, full of garbage and makes no sense. I don't know. That's, that's useful too.

You know, the— as a recovering consultant, it felt like working in management consulting, which I think is like neither causal nor divine, like the— probably the opposite of divine in many ways. I'm sure there are some people who are practicing in the profession of consulting that it is much closer to that than where I was. But it kind of like felt like swimming in acid a little bit, and it just And that eventually was like the eject button for me to— it was time to get out because nothing felt good about it. And I don't know, maybe I lean a little bit too hard on how do things feel, but I feel like a lot of the last couple of years have been struggling to find the thing that didn't cause an internal conflict within myself about is this worth doing? Is it valuable? Is it something that I feel good about when I, when I go to sleep, or that I feel good about with my, with my life when I think about it? Yeah. Um, well, why don't we hit a couple, uh, a couple mailbags real quick? Um, the first one is from, uh, we, we have our listener on YouTube and our listener on, uh, Spotify left comments, so thanks to both of you. Uh, Mike, uh, asked, how do you know, uh, this is, uh, yeah, so we're completely leaving the Divine Lover thing. Um, it's How do you know when to quit? Um, distinguishing between this is hard, but keep going versus this startup idea is never going to work.

Yeah. I mean, I would say when most people do this, most people do this with the wrong signals. It's often with the signals of we can't get people to talk to us, right? Like, and which, look, we just don't have data. We just haven't, we haven't, we don't have actually any data with that. We have, we have non-data with that. And so I would say if you've gone goblin mode, met with a bunch of people and they're potential customers who you're like, they should have pull and they give you a middle finger, right? Or, um, or if you've gone through multiple iterations of pull and you're just not feeling it and there's no, there's no other business that you can look at and say, okay, they've kind of found pull here. Like if there's just nothing there, then I would say, yeah, at that point you might consider totally changing your, your pull hypothesis. But most people do this at the point where they're like, Yeah, it's not working because I'm not scheduling meetings and I'm not scheduling meetings because I'm not actually trying to. And so maybe we should pivot. I'm like, that's the wrong time to pivot.

Hmm. Hmm. Um, and then let's hit this other one. It's, uh, this was the YouTube one. Uh, Divya Swirl is their I don't, maybe that's her name. Um, does it necessarily have to be true that your startup is the only one that can solve the problem for the customer?, the list of options that the customer have, has, should have some serious limitations according to your, your pull framework, um, that make your solution stand out. But what if you're basically like in a crowded, little bit more mature market or fully mature market?

Yeah. So, um, they have to have a reason to choose you, right? And so it's about what options do they actually consider and how do you win among those options? So what a lot of people will consider as a crowded market is that there are 20 YC startups running out of thing right now. Most customers are not considering those 20 YC startups. They're considering hiring somebody, using a spreadsheet, or using their old XYZ tool, right? And so that's what you're actually competing against versus like the competition that is theoretically in the market. Markets are huge. And so it's just, what are the options they're actually considering? And if you can't sit there and say, like, they actually believe these options have limitations, then you're in this kind of fantasy world where you're like, well, they should, they should pick me because I'm me. And that's not a, that's not a valid argument, right? That you have to have some reason why their existing options are not good enough. Even in a crowded space, there are plenty of reasons that is, and, and you can uniquely help them, uh, uh, you know, overcome those limitations.

It including awareness as, uh, yeah, like as a limitation, um, where, you know, you're, we're out thinking about, uh, expanding supply, the definition of supply to be more than only the product that, uh, that's offered, including your outbound messaging, including, you know, the channels that you're using, including your toll booth, whatever it might be. Um, you know, it, uh, there's, there's, I, I read this and I was, that's where my brain immediately went to.

Yeah. Yeah. I think it's, I think it's just like they're probably unaware of people that you think are competitors and you're not competing against who you're thinking, who you think you are. And if, and, and if you happen to be competing against somebody who is really, really good and objectively better than you in most ways, The question is, okay, can you find a place where that's not the case or can you find a different vector of competition?

Hmm. Yep. Awesome. Well, thank you to our listener on both platforms for, for the questions. If anybody else has questions, drop them in or responses to this, help, help Rob, help me help Rob, whatever it is with this particular theory on the, on the divide and labor. Rob, anything? Oh, We've, you've got a bootcamp coming up that starts November 3rd for anybody that's interested. We'll drop the link in. Anything you wanna add on, on that, Rob?

Nope.

No. Okay. It'll be for, um, you know, a, a bunch of founders that are running basically a sprint together, uh, you know, trying to refine and, uh, working with Rob in order to do that. Uh, yeah. Info will be in the, in the description. Uh, if nothing else, Rob, we can let our listener go.

Yeah. Well, we'll see. We'll see if we have any after this one.

Yeah. All right. See y'all later.