everybody. This is Stella TFT,

and this is heating Shah. And today, on the startup chat, we're gonna talk about doing what scares you.

You like talking about more than just sales and market. We just want a bullshit and chat about business and life. And hopefully, while we're doing that, provide along value Teoh for people trying to get shit done way. Don't want to give you feedback. That's bullshit.

You want you to do your best. The reason I want to talk about this is because recently my f y I co founder Marie decided to go on ah, camping trip alone, but not quite alone. She was with her dog, which is probably even more scary in some ways. And in a bunch of private chat, she was talking about bears and being scared of bears. And we're in California and apparently there's bears. And then Twitter. She was talking about how she was doing it, and what was really cool is a lot of other people chimed in about going on, you know, solo camping trips and dealing with the fears and things like that, making a fire and all that good stuff. So, yeah,

I just want to talk about doing what scares you because it can extend to anything personal life or were or whatever. Really just I think something that we tend to sort of humans like we grow by doing things that were not comfortable with doing things that might scare us. And at the same time, we also kind of don't do them. So we lose out on growth and opportunity like that. And personally, I think there are things that I'm thinking through right now myself that, like, probably scare me a little bit, And but yet I know that they're gonna help me grow. And I know that I want them and I want that experience. Ah, so yeah, just wanted to chat with you about this because I think it's like a very common thing and something that a lot of people could get a bunch of value from.

I love it. So I think that I've said this many, many times that, you know, I do think that fear is the compass like fear points usually to a direction. They there's something valuable at the end of fear like this. There's something you know. Either it's outside your comfort or no, it's always outside your comfort if it's associated with fear, I guess. But doing something that you're afraid of usually will lead to something valuable. Valuable experience, a valuable skill, acquired, a valuable thing that you accomplished. But because there's fear between you and that thing of that experience, it's what's holding most of us.

Back right. I recently wondered if that's always good advice, all right, when it first, maybe this is funky out of this is going to lead to any place worthwhile going or exploring. But other exceptions to this is it some? When is it right to let your fear hold you back or to let what scares you? Define what you do or you don't there situations where fear is. I mean, of course, life and death, right? Don't maybe, you know, jump into the the lines, then you know,

whatever the zoo. Maybe don't go near or into areas of wild animals like this. There's survival situations where where fear is probably a good instinct to follow up to listen to. But in more day to day life, in more life decisions that are life and death, is there ever a place where we need to listen to our field or where we will, where what scares us is something we should not move towards do.

Yeah. I mean, I think if something scares you and there's some level of life like life and death associated with it, you know around whether you do it, you might die, right, like and die without, you know, appropriate, uh, measures. Eso it's like, really risky. So I think one of the things that comes into play when it comes to doing what scares you has a lot to do with risk. And how risky is it is a life or death situation. Things like that. Those air like,

one kind of aspect. I think another one is when it comes to scares you. Like, if I were to be very prescriptive, I would love to see more people doing exercise, actually listing out the things that scare them. Ah, whether it's like something they're about to do or something that in general would scare them like, you know, my co founder Marie, she probably list down going camping alone would scare her. She also has probably a lot of things sent. Might scare here besides that as well, not to blow up her spot, but like, yeah,

And in my case, I think a lot of things that scare me like going camping alone to me is now. You've been scary, cause I just wouldn't do it is like a not a desire, you know? Yeah. There's this whole idea of like, do you desire it, right? Does it scare you? What parts of it scare you? Because if you don't desire it and it's something scary for you, you're not gonna do it doesn't matter, right? There's a lot of things that I don't desire, so I don't even think about them.

Well, in her case, she desires that she's gone camping with other people before, Right? She went camping when she was a kid, right? So this is like a big like it was probably, I think, actually a big milestone. I've seen her after that, and I think there's a big milestone. There's possibly even something that's changed in her as a result of this experience, frankly speaking, and so part of me is like when when you when you stink through, like, things that scare you,

things that you desire that scare you, uh, or things you gravitated towards. But they still scare you. It's almost like you. You want to feed the fear in a positive way. Um and yeah, I'm sure there are things that scare you that you shouldn't do. Like go. You know, I don't know. Go hang out with a snake. Poison the state, like maybe maybe shouldn't do that. So, yeah,

I find it a fascinating topic because the things that scare people are very different. Like there's things in business that scare me. And I definitely do that. And there are things that you know in business a probably scare other people that would never scare me, whether it's cause I've done them before, or I, um I'm just comfortable like, Ah, what just general, most business stuff. I think another way to think about it that I know some people would would kind of throwback and be like, Oh, nothing scares me. I would say that. Then you probably might not be able to really grok and understand the definition of the word because, you know,

as a founder, or as somebody who's sort of like done a lot of things in their lives or is trying something new, like starting a company or something like that. You might already have this idea in your head where, like founders have no fear. Yeah, I don't know how true that is. I don't

believe that. It's total bullshit that is absolutely total bullshit. Um, I think in general a lot of the things that we say about Founders is bullshit. A. A lot of like, self believes anything that really makes that distinct a group and makes it better. It's away from from other groups. In most cases, it's probably has a lot of Bs in there. I think that founders are, you know, just a scared is, is other people. They're just scared about different things, right? You could You could appear to be incredibly brave because you do all these crazy things,

but what really drives you steer and the fear of being insignificant? Maybe the panic and fear, you know, not being admired and loved might push you to do these crazy stunts that's that are physically very dangerous because you're not afraid to die, are not afraid to get injured, but you're really afraid to be alone or being significant or whatever. You don't know what drives people and a lot of fun was driven by fear. They're not just driven by but envision to change the world and by their bravado. And, uh, yeah, that's that's a cool story. But I you know, I've met Aton of founders. I've been a fan of my almost my entire life adult life very similar to your story. We've been exposed to a lot of founders,

and I wouldn't be able to say that I've observed less fear and the founder, entrepreneur community, and then in other communities. Let me ask. You said that maybe something that will be useful to people listen to us is to share a You know, you shared your co founder doing something kind of outside the business world. That was another the start of world. That was something she was scared of, which is don't like going camping alone was something she was afraid of. And I think I can totally relate to her feeling empowered by overcoming that fear and going Hey, I'm strong. I did it. I look in my fear. I survived. I can I can. Being slightly more dangerous situations that I'm used to and I could do well and it's fine.

Those are always awesome moments. But I'm wondering, maybe we should also share a recent, more recent moments where we were afraid. We're scared of something. I wanted to do something we were scared off. That relates to the starter world in one way or another, and I'll go first. You can ponder what example you want to share, and you can go second. But I always feel like when people like us that some people might admire and look up to When we go deep and share something that's current, it makes it much more come a life. And when we just talk about the topic, yeah, so far, so now I'm thinking like What the fuck if I gonna say things is part of why this spot gets is eso popular?

A lot of people get a lot from it is that it's not scripted. We don't really spend a lot of time thinking through what we're going to say. I did a bunch of podcast recordings in last three weeks because of what it promotes. The new book that we brought out at closing all that. It's every time Most times going to do a pockets recording. I'm like, Wow, all these people do this completely differently from Lucky trying to get that's right way Don't do second takes. We don't have a script. So okay, so what's something that I recently did business that scared me? Men? I think that's the biggest thing that I can think of is actually the There's two things. One. We did a very big pricing project. It closed at the beginning of the year.

We have talked about this on the Poskus before, for sure that was against kind of one of my one of the belief that I had for a very long time. And I was scared to change things like I always loved simple pricing models and always loved that. We offer people like three simple pricing tiers, and you could have all you want it in. One of them is kind of like, especially the telephony piece that we do that we allow people to make calls receive. Call six sent a text message just all that. I've always hated the idea of having a usage based pricing. I always want to give people a package because that, to me, was simple. That's how I want to buy things. So I always resisted that. And then eventually I convinced myself that that was wrong and that we needed to switch up pricing model. And when we started working on that pricing project and like changing completely r presidential sexual works,

I did a couple of moments where I looked at the math and I said, If this doesn't work out, it might really get get us in big trouble And it was it was interesting to see how, like how I got scared a few times, Just like that, that emotion came up. I was surprised about it myself, and I was like, Well, I haven't felt this in a while. But last time said a place really big bets. Ah, place bets where the team was much smaller. The business which month smaller. And it seems like if if those bets didn't work out, nothing really bad would happen.

But now it's a much bigger team. There's a lot of people here that have that pay their mortgages, have Children, have their families like I'm responsible for a lot of people and this business is quite big. And so making this big of a bat, making this radical of a change for us and having like the worst case scenario, be one where we lose a Thanh of revenue. That was quite scary. And and it was both. I was both surprised by that had these moments literally heating where I would go should I haven't felt this in years. This is a weird feeling. What do I do with this? That's pretty awesome. So God feel scared. That's so weird. And then I had moments where I went back to this.

I think deep believed that I you and I share. That's like, Well, if I'm scared at least like we're doing real shit here, right? Um, it where we're changing something we're really and does My rational makes sense why we're making the sisters. That would go through the rational again to make sure that we thought this out carefully through, and I still believe it's the right decision. And then it was just about, like, embracing that fear and thinking about it, like reframing it as excitement and going You know what? Maybe I just gonna think about this feeling as excitement. Maybe I'm just excited about this. Maybe something realist happening.

Um, that's one example of like that. I thought another quick example in there because it feels closer, that kind of more intimate. This is I don't even know if it fits in terms of doing what scares you. Well, in some ways it does. But I think I think what I recognized this year is that for the past 20 years of hiring people employing people, I have, I've learned to deal with conflict, and I've always been very frank with people. But the underlying kind of working principle that I have when it comes to people is that I am a seeker of harmony, right? This is hard to believe for some people that know me, but I do like harmony, and I want people to be happy.

And I want things to be aligned right and everybody to be like in a good place, not necessary. Somebody that enjoys conflict and attacks conflict with, like a passionate and an excitement like I try to avoid conflict or try to eliminate conflict whenever I can. That's kind of my operating principle, and I remember a couple of months of the 23 months ago, there was a situation with somebody on our team where I had to have a conversation with this person about something that was quite a difficult topic to discuss and where there were very high trances that it wouldn't go down well, like it would create kinda a bad situation between the two of us. And I remember the back in the day I would have gone pregnant with that task full. While I would have liked thought about it a lot, I would have constantly tried to optimize for the conversation like, How can I have this conversation to make sure it doesn't lead to conflict? How can I make break this news and talk about this topic with this person away that's gonna make this feel as good as it can write? That was kind of the thing that guided my game plan in the past, and this time around for the first time, I kind of let left that behind me,

and I was like, Well, this is not a good way of thinking like off course. I don't wanna upset anybody I want don't want to have an argument, but that can't be my number one goal, like my number one goal is X. So I need to optimize this conversation to accomplish X, and I'm gonna do it in a humane, fair and transparent way. But if the person gets upset, that's beyond my control. And it's gonna pass like I shouldn't like, overly optimized for that. And that was the first time that I went into a conversation where I didn't care how the person would react. I was like, I know this is the right thing to do.

I know that I'm going to focus on the right way. And if this person gets upset, they get upset, will deal with it then, right? I'm not gonna spend all my energy and time. I'm trying to cook up some some way of some strategy that makes me feel safe because I think I can get into this conversation, have a high chance of talking about this in a way that will feel good to this person, and I don't know, like there was a big shift for me, and it changed the way I feel about the people I work with from a still deeply care about them. I want all of them to be happy and fulfilled. But I'm not as scared as I used to be. To confront people, to have very difficult conversations earlier and with a different focus than in the past way. I think I often times over optimized for harmony than NTL. So that was kind of it was a conversation where it didn't have that fear anymore that I used to always have in those situations.

Yeah, I can relate. I think 11 that I'll share that quite similar and a little bit different is like I I always had the fear of somebody not liking me. And in some, you know, in business, I think it can be really harmful, harmful thing when you have that fear and you have to make good business decisions. I mean, great business decision, because if you're fearful of somebody not liking you, then you might not do the right thing. We actually probably won't do the right thing and even go further and say that Yeah, and so and I'm trying to do is I'm trying to do the right thing and it's really tough to do. If I have this fear that they're not gonna like me because it will stop me from figuring out it stops me from figuring out what is the right thing to do. And how can I do that right thing? Ah,

in this moment, regardless in the right thing for the business, the right thing for the people on the team, not necessarily driven by what I think is the right thing that's gonna keep my psyche happy. Boys like this person likes me or doesn't like me. And the funny thing about this has just been aware now of this, and that's all I really needed to do. Once I became aware of this, everything I did, I got converted over toe, being more so about doing the right thing versus doing the thing that prevents people from not liking me because that's also a very subjective thing. And more importantly, I don't control whether someone likes me or not. She is not realistically so even my problem. Like I know that sounds weird, but whether someone likes me or not,

I could just do the best they can. I should not be trying to optimize my life around somebody else like INGLEY. And so I I usedto have And probably there's still parts of this that exists for me. But I have this fear of that. It's basically a sphere that, Oh, they're not gonna like me or this fear that I'm gonna say something or do something that's good like I that I need to do. But in that process, they're not gonna like me or they're not gonna like what I have to say. So I stopped worrying about that, and it has really been transformative for me. And this is like almost like a daily fear of fine that, you know, I've had to work on very similar to what you were saying where I kind of want to be, like, I kind of want I can't and I even overthink it.

I over think the message. I overthink saying something. I overthink how I'm going to say it with, honestly, the wrong attitude. And I think the wrong attitude is overthinking it with the idea that whatever I say, they should like me. It's actually more important that whatever I say, it should be true to what I want to communicate and what I need to be saying in that moment in order to achieve whatever goal or outcome I'm looking at, chief, That's now more important to me than saying things that someone else is gonna feel ok about, cause I can't even predict that in a lot of cases to I can't predict whether I'm gonna say something and someone else is gonna be okay or not Okay with it, then. This doesn't mean like I'm not compassionate. I don't try to be compassion. I think all those things are important. But I should not be driven by this fear that someone else is not gonna like what I have to say or what I'm

doing. I fucking love it. All right. This is, uh, from us. Do what scares you. Gotta and, uh, what is scary. You. That might be a good question to end the episode with, If you feel like sharing, send us an email. Stelea close dot com h and Shah and Gino that come let us know what scares you. Would you going to do about it? And, uh Well, here, you very,