Chris:

When to trust your gut in business? How do we know we've earned that right to make that decision? And is there a difference between intuition, that gut feeling, and how do we know we're going to make a good decision that's going to benefit us in the long run?

So Mo has been very courageous to let you know what he's really going through right now. And he's been also just super generous in saying, "Chris and I have worked through these issues already recently," and just to recreate that conversation, that dialogue so that you all can sit in on a coaching session together. Usually these are done in private for a lot of money, but we're doing here for you. And of course, our heart centered leader, our marshmallow and hot cup of coffee or chocolate, Nidhi, our mental health therapist is here just to make sure I don't destroy a lot of people, that there's a little heart in the robot here. With that, let's continue the conversation.

Mo:

Do you know the meme, the video meme of the lady on the subway with her headphones on and she's closing her eyes and she's like shaking her shoulders and she has that face of pure joy? When you started playing that music, I'm in my dark office, screen's closed, eyes closed, and I'm just wiggling my shoulders. Just boom, left or right, I'm vibing. That was very nice.

Chris:

That's very cool. You almost destroyed it, but thank you. All right, I want to read a comment here from Angelique. Angelique's very active in our rooms here. And so Angelique is saying that, "Are the results being discussed measured by money made and not by the impact of the content? Anyone can sell stuff online and lots of people are ripping people off claiming success. Can you clarify?" I don't think we talked about results. We're not really getting to the specifics of the course itself. We're looking at the big business decision, if Mo should go in one direction or another, do both or focus on something else entirely or do something that gives him joy.

Mo:

You shared an example of something that was going on in your life that you found tremendously difficult for reasons you know, and you told me every difficult thing that's put in front of you is a sign that this is a path to success. You said the more you do, the less you resist, the faster you move and embrace it. And I think that for me is truly what I'm going through in this moment. I've gone through it in the past before, but not with this level of intensity. And I think that's why there's so much scrutiny around the decision because I'm a little bit wiser than the Mo who used to jump and I'm covering my basis. But it was so profound to me because you said it earlier again tonight, it's hard to make these decisions. It's hard to be decisive.

And it's because for me, at least more often than not, making the decision equates to having to do something hard along the way to get to that next stage. And I just thought it was beautiful after the story that you had shared with me that that is the sign. Don't take the foot off the gas now, stay in it. And then the more that happens, the less you'll resist in the future, and the faster you'll be to make these decisions. And I hope that helps somebody in the room that may be feeling stagnant or unable to just pick. Maybe the difficulty is that sign of where the direction needs to be.

Chris:

I have to ask you a question Mo. I'm usually pretty transparent, so if I told you a story about myself, feel free to mention it and I'll talk about it.

Mo:

Yeah.

Chris:

I also sometimes have to be very careful because of my general way that I share. I'm like, "Oh, I'll share my story, I'll share your story, and I'll share the other person's story." And that's sometimes not cool to do without the person's explicit permission that it's okay to do, so go ahead. What is it that I talked about that was difficult?

Mo:

This was about your hair.

Chris:

Oh, I'll share that right now.

Mo:

Yeah. And yeah, yeah. What I loved about it was whether you knew it or not, I think you were pretty vulnerable with me and how you were feeling during that era. So I'd love for you to share that and how you grew through it too.

Chris:

Yes, this may be hard for some of you to believe, but I'm bald. No, that's the part that's not hard to believe, obviously I am. But for a number of years, I had some crazy hairdos. I had at one point dreadlocks and really crazy spiky hair, but all that maintenance was just too much for me. Sitting in this lawn chair for hours, getting my hair bleached, and getting it cut, and making the appointment, it was just too much. So while I was in my mid-twenties, I think it was only a year or two after starting the company, I'm like, "That's it. I'm tired. I'm going to go buy electric shears, I'm just going to shave my head." And that's what I did. And to my surprise, people were like, "Hey, that's cool." And I loved it because basically every three or four weeks I would just buzz, cut my own hair and be done with it.

Super efficient, right? Trying to tap into some of that Einstein magic where if you have the exact same wardrobe, you don't have to spend any time thinking about it. No product, no fuss, no muss. So that became my hairstyle and over the years, as my hair starts to thin out, instead of cutting my hair every three or four weeks, it'd be every two weeks. And then instead of using a number two razor, it'd be number one and then it'd be just a zero, just getting a shorter and shorter cut. And eventually, I don't know when it is, now that I'm in my forties, I'm like, "Okay, I have to shave my head now because I don't like splotchy patches of hair on my head, doesn't look clean, doesn't look right for me." So I start to shave my head. Now it's becoming an every other day occurrence.

And I'm hating this process and this experience because I'm like, "What a drag. This sucks. Maybe I should just have it all lasered off so I don't have to deal with this. I don't really care." Don't really have an attachment to the hair, it's just a pain in the ass. So a lot of times what I would do, I would sit there in bed, I'm like, "I don't want to do a Zoom call. I don't want to do anything because if I do, I got to go cut my hair again. I got to shave it with a razor blade." And every time I was doing it, I was not happy, I was angry about it. It's just like, "Oh, this is minutes away from doing something much more important and I'm sitting here doing it." And of course when I'm in that mindset, I cut my head and I'm bleeding. I'm like, "Okay, this is not a good way to be."

So I have to make some peace with myself. You know what? I either shave my head or I don't. I either like it or I don't, but choose one or the other. I don't care what people say, let it grow out. Who cares what it looks like? That's that. And if I'm going to do it because I care, then learn to embrace and love the process. Learn to tell yourself, "This is a joyful experience." And it took a long time. It wasn't just an overnight thing where I wake up one day, I'm like, "I'm going to just do it. Not a big deal." No. It took weeks of me sitting in the shower, having a conversation with myself, saying, "You know what? Learn to love this. Learn to love this." And now I do it and instead of just pushing through it, I'm like, "You know what? The shaving cream smells really nice. It's nice that I feel the hot water on your head and it feels good to be clean and like a dolphin, hairless, totally." And I just tell myself this.

So the reason why I tell Mo this is because a lot of times, we look at people from afar and we think, "Oh, everything comes easy. So therefore if we want to be successful, just choose the easy path. Don't do the hard work, don't stick it out. This is more fun today. So let's pursue that instead." And I'm just illustrating something very simple that you don't love it at the beginning, but you learn to love it or you change your mind and you do something else. But doing something and being miserable about it isn't the way to move forward because you're only going to self-sabotage. And there's countless examples of this. If you look into your own life, if you tell yourself a different story, the results and the joy that you get from doing it will be very, very different.

Mo:

Nidhi's on the back channel, "Yo, I need receipts of the hair."

Nidhi:

Where's the bleached spike pictures, man? I need to see them.

Chris:

I can show it to you.

Nidhi:

Please.

Mo:

I'm curious why earlier when Henry made the comment about joy and you're like, "We're opening a can of worms?" Where was your headspace there? Where did you want to take it when you asked?

Chris:

Well, simply because we think we have clarity and then I'm going to say this in all jest, our quote unquote, friends say, "Bo, you should do this." Like your friend Drego, "Mo's very good at doing Instagram lives and reels." You're making it murky for my friend who has a hard time committing to something, sticking to something. So when you think he's made a decision, when he thinks he's going to leave the mafia, the mob, Henry's like, "But there's one last job. Oh, there's one last job, it's the big score." And I was like, "Oh, they just pull me right back." That's why I was laughing.

Mo:

I'd hit a score with Henry. I feel like it would be a great movie. I don't know if that is good, but I don't know.

Henry:

Another thing I was thinking about was, "All right, well, I want to hit this revenue goal this year. I want this as a result of my hard work this year and I want that." And then the next question that came to mind was, "What for? Why do I want this? Why do I want to hit that revenue goal?" And I think that answering that may help you get even more refined and defined on what it is that's going to help you get there. I think when people realize what they're doing, whatever they're doing for, that clarity starts to click in and it starts to get a little easier and that motivation comes back and that focus comes back. And I just think, "Yeah, $500K a year, you can live a great living off of that, you can. What for? What do you plan on doing with that?" And maybe sharing that.

You don't have to share that with all of us, but I mean sharing it with your family, sharing it with your mentors, sharing it... Whatever. I think that's really going to help people understand what you're doing. And I think that could bring a tremendous amount of action. And I like what Chris said before was it's hard to be successful at something that you're half excited about. So I think what's going to bring you the best result for your company this year is just doing what you love to do and knowing why you're doing that and never lose focus of that.

Nidhi:

I also was thinking, Mo, that part of you building your intuition is that you recognize this pattern of wanting to jump and feeling trapped. And I think that that is part of you developing that intuitive response too, because the definition is based on the ability to gauge these different patterns, that's now one that you can incorporate into your gut instincts. So that discernment in that moment, now that you know what that feels like to feel like I'm jumping because that's what I'm used to and that's comfortable for me, I think that that data and that information can now be a part of how you move forward and make different decisions for your business.

Mo:

You're a hundred percent right. I want to share how difficult that was though. And maybe you're listening and you're like, "Well, this doesn't sound that hard." But at the core, the conversation was around, "You made this much this year and you made this here, this there." And that was the data, that was the surface level data about the business. But the root of the problem, I had to look in the mirror really hard because, and I'll share this at some point maybe, on my iPad, I literally wrote down, "2013 to 2022," and I mapped out and there's three year segments of trying something. Now granted, I was in academia for the majority of it, but there was a lot of justification happening as I reflect in the moment that "Well, you're trying, you're experimenting." But it wasn't trying and experimenting with the intention of staying in some of those things that I was trying and experimenting.

There was a lot of fear there, there was a lot of self-doubt, a lot of kind of doing but not really doing. And this conversation, and you guys can go back to an After Hours that we had a year ago, remnants of this conversation before facing it were there. But if you're listening and there's something about this that resonates with you, I want to let you know that after my midnight calls with Chris, there are moments of reflection that are difficult to look at because you're seeing somebody that doesn't match with the ideal version of yourself that you want to evolve into. So I recognize, and I'll use a term here, that I'm incongruent. And it was only then that it was clear to me that it's not just making a decision around the business, it's making a decision on how and who I want to be throughout everything that I decide on moving forward because of this habit of mine.

And I think that's why I keep revisiting this conversation and trying to take us back into these phone calls that we may not have had on Twitter Spaces because it's not pretty when you first look at it because you're looking at yourself. And then in that moment, you have to be, this is my experience at least, "How might I move forward and not be susceptible to self-sabotage based on where I want to end up and who I believe myself to be?" So I want to let you know that if you're like me and you take the time to reflect around this conversation and map it out to why this is an even intriguing conversation for you, that there is going to come a point of self-reflection that will be challenging. But I can tell you, as I'm a little bit after that point of self-reflection, it is really liberating. So I just want to say that out loud and thank Nidhi and Chris for rocking with me as we've been talking about this over I think what's been two weeks now.

Chris:

I think the interesting thing is we were wondering to ourselves, "Why can't Mo just see the light and make a decision? Either A or B, why are we still talking about these kinds of things?" And then if you think to your own life, if you reflect back on the tough decisions that you've had to make in your life, how come it hasn't been so easy for you either? So with this, I just want us all to keep in mind there's some kind of theory that however many years it takes you to form an opinion about something, it takes you half that amount of time to undo that kind of pattern. So if it took you 10 years to get to this point, it might take you five years to get out of this point. It's not going to happen overnight. Unless you're a robot, it's not going to happen. And so we're gently moving away from a decision and each time I think it's becoming a little clear, we're making a commitment to ourselves, but in the meantime, I ask that we just give each other a little grace, okay?

All right. So next up is Jessica. Jessica delivered a lot of fire last time. So Jessica has something she wants to ask or say.

Jessica:

Hey, I've been listening to you guys and I have one question for you Mo and then one thought. So listening to this conversation, I'm making a lot of assumption about you, so Mo, please feel free to push back, you seem to be very obsessed with the business model that you're set based on everything that Chris mentioned. And my question is why is this so important for you to know if you're right or wrong right now? Because my question is we probably will never get complete information. So instead of trying to figure out if you're making the right or wrong decision, can you place small bets and write down... You also talked about confirmation bias, right? So why couldn't you take the approach of making these small bets and then set a cadence for yourself and say, "With these small bets, here are the things I want to validate?"

And in a quarter, in two month, you can say, "This is the answer I expect to see." And then go forward with whatever assumption you have and test it and then just iterate. Because I feel like, I think it's Nabal who said, "You should either be earning, learning, or resting." And so if you're not making money, then you should be learning with your experience. So why can't you just set up small bets like that and then test the market and then let the market speak to you? Because what I'm hearing right now, you're so obsessed with the idea... It's kind of like dating, right? I'm sorry for the analogy. It's kind of like dating. You tell your girlfriend that this is not a good guy, but she wouldn't understand until she started dating him. So I always feel like when I'm talking to somebody and they have a very strong opinion that I obviously can't change, I would say, "Play small bet, test the market," and help them to learn themselves.

So Mo, my question is why aren't you taking that approach? So that's my question. And then another comment I love to make is, I think it's Alex or it was Henry, that talk about what gives you the most joy. So how I think about entrepreneurship is that I don't think entrepreneurs stop because it's hard. They stop because of two things. They either run out of money or they run out of passion. And so that's why I agree a hundred percent that you need to have passion, right? Because otherwise you run out. But I think the other logical idea that Crystal's presenting is you also need to make sure that, we talked about risk today, so what is risky for you? So we need to make sure that you don't run out passion or you don't run out of money. You need to balance both of them. So that's like my 2 cents. So giving this back to you, Mo and Chris, and love to hear your thought on why don't you just conduct a small experiment instead of trying to get the perfect information.

Mo:

I am currently conducting that small experiment and that was a big part of the first call because I came in like, "Yo, I can do 250 out of that 500 straight off the course." And he was like, "Mm, let's look at the data. Maybe we need to 80/20 this. Yes, since you've already built the program and all that, do maybe a 400 service, a hundred thousand program. Don't throw service away completely." So what you're saying is what I'm doing.

Jessica:

What is your checkpoint and what signal are you looking for?

Mo:

Yeah, so my checkpoint is 13 new members in one month or 42 in a quarter. But what me and Chris talked about is waiting a quarter is too long, validate it in a month. So that's the checkpoint.

Jessica:

Sounds good.

Mo:

And I'll expand a little bit about something that you said. For me, it's not necessarily about making the right or wrong decision. It's I could sense that I was not confident about my decision and that I was still attached between two worlds. And because of that lack of confidence, I didn't trust the big decision that I was wanting to make. That's why I came in saying, "I think I can do all the revenue in courses," and data-wise, it didn't add up and it required counsel for me to understand how to build confidence around decision-making. And that piece was looking at the evidence, looking at the data more clearly, stepping away from confirmation bias, and then making small steps that you can validate versus putting all your bets on this thing. Especially, and the key takeaway for me was making the decision out of a place of escape or making the decision out of a place of aspiration without that foundational data. So I think much of what you just said is a core recap of many of the things we've been doing and kind of the trajectory that I'm on over into '22.

Jessica:

Very cool. So you're basically updating your own operating system or your own belief through data confirmation and also through action, right? Because sometimes you just have to walk the walk to really believe in it. That's very cool. Thank you for sharing.

Chris:

Time for a quick break. But we'll be right back.

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Speaker 7:

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Elise Hu:

When should we go into the office? How do you network when you're working remotely. On WorkLab, the podcast from Microsoft, we explore how work is changing. It's hosted by me, Elise Hu.

Tonya Mosley:

And me, Tonya Mosley. We talk to leading experts on the future of work.

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Authors, behavioral scientists, and more.

Tonya Mosley:

Follow WorkLab on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.

Chris:

Welcome back to our conversation.

I'm a big believer in the small bets versus one big gamble. That's something you've heard me say before, small bets versus one big gamble. And from where everybody's sitting, we're like, "Wait a minute, is he making a lot of small bets right now or is he making one big gamble going all in on the service business?" There's some context that you need to understand because oftentimes, this has happened to me throughout my 15 years of teaching at an art school, I say something, I think I'm really clear, and then next week they come back and I'm like, "Well, who told you to do that?" And they're like, "You told us to do that." I'm like, "That's not what I said. Tell me what I said." What they hear is very different. They hear a certain part of it and they internalize it and the actions that they take are yet a whole another thing to unpack.

Let's look at this. When you have a business that you run, you need to dedicate some amount of money to R&D. And let's just say if you're a really healthy company, you're going to invest 20% of your revenue to R&D. That R&D is what you do to ensure that you don't get disrupted by someone else, that you disrupt yourself. It could be called the skunk works program or something like that. So in that program, let's just say you make a million dollars a year, you're going to spend $200,000 in R&D, which is a really healthy amount of money. You don't want to say, "Well, we have one big idea, let's go all in on this one idea. If the idea fails, we'll have to wait until next year to try again." What you want to do is you want to take that $200,000 and you want to break it into 10 small projects and you keep trying, you iterate, and you'll learn.

And chances are by the seventh or eighth failure, you'll have figured something out and you still have some money to make it work. That's where I think the small bets versus the one big gamble is really affective in entrepreneurship. Problem here is... Mo, unmute yourself. I just want to ask you a series of really quick questions here, okay? Are you independently wealthy?

Mo:

No.

Chris:

Do you have a trust fund?

Mo:

No.

Chris:

Do you have a lottery ticket we don't know about or you have a venture capitalist backing you?

Mo:

No. And I don't have oil money even though I'm Arab.

Chris:

All right.

Mo:

We can just scratch that out too.

Chris:

Okay, glad we cleared that part up. So given that this is the current situation that you're in, you kind of have to make your main thing your main thing, you got to make it work because without the main thing bringing in the money so that you can try the R&D projects, nothing's going to work. That's why we went with the 80/20 philosophy, you see? Because it also happens to fit within 20% in R&D. So you can chalk up the creating the course thing as just a learning experience or something that gives you joy, something that makes your heart happy, totally fine. But when you're telling me it's 50/50 or this or that, I'm like, "What are you thinking? Doesn't make sense to me right now." I just want to be clear about that, okay?

Now here's something I want all of you to think about. Whatever job that you're at right now, you remember when you started, you loved this thing so much. You probably even told yourself, "I can't even see myself doing anything else." And along the way, you don't get the results that you want, you're not paid what you're worth, you're not capturing the attention or the audience or creating the influence and most importantly, you're not creating the kind of impact that you want to make on the lives of the people you wish to serve, whether that be your clients, your client's customer, or some other audience. You're not making any of that. So you're starting to feel like this is work and the work sucks and the joy is escaping this whole thing that you do and it's just turning into a J-O-B. It's a job now for you.

But change the variables here and ask yourself this question, "Would I feel that spark of joy, that passion to do what it is that I'm doing today if I was paid what I was worth, if I was getting the audience and the accolades and building the authority and the space that I'm in? If I can feel like I'm making progress towards the top of the heap, would that change my outlook?" And if the answer is yes, don't switch gears. Figure out how to be successful at the thing that you used to love because otherwise you're going to switch. And here's the dangerous part in all of this, if I may use that word so loosely here, is you haven't yet developed the blueprint for success. So when we talked earlier about Elon Musk or Steve Jobs being able to go from one risky venture to another, it's because they already have that blueprint for success.

And Mo's still a relatively young person, he's still relatively new in his career path, which is different than what he studied in school. So I want for him what I want for all of you is to taste success, to for one minute in your life to be able to say, "I'm top 1000. I'm top 100, I'm on the Inc. 500, 5,000 list. I've made it. I have a blueprint," not a guarantee for success in future endeavors, but hey, that's something that you can put in your cap, that feather you can put in your cap, knowing very well you've been here before, you'll know how to get here again. This is where I'm a big proponent for persistence and the right holiday expression, persist and resist. Persist in the endeavor that you're doing and resist the temptation of doing something different. Now, Mo, to the question that Nidhi has said, which I think solves all of our problems in the most economical number of words, is it avoidance or is it misalignment? And we already know the answer to this question, right, Mo?

Mo:

Yeah, we do.

Chris:

What is it?

Mo:

Oh, it's avoidance.

Chris:

What are you avoiding? Why are you getting so cheap with words now?

Mo:

Because you want me to be more economical with my words?

Chris:

No, I said, Nidhi was so economical with-

Mo:

I'm about to hit you with the notebook line, "What do you want? What do you want?" I give you what you want, you tell me I interrupted the vibes but we're here because I'm interrupting the vibes. No, the dip, I'm avoiding the dip. It's the work that previously I did not want to do. And I think that's why you told me to earn the right, that's what's avoiding the things that make it feel like a job. And through these conversations and through you playing back to me your history, you are rewarded for that hard work. And I was listening to a talk and I really feel like the universe is aligning with what I'm asking for, whether you believe in signs and fluff or not, I was listening to a talk by Alex Hormozi, and he says, "Do not quantify work as just the output of what you do, but rather quantify it as the input of building your character."

I may have butchered that, but the perspective shift for me is huge because I'm not doing this work in vain. No, this is changing who I am for the better relative to what I want to accomplish. And just that switch from that lesson and from the conversations with you, I did it this past weekend. Going back to your hair shaving analogy, I was reviewing some copywriting for a sales page, something very simple that I did not want to do and it was taking longer than I had expected it to. I was like, "I could be doing something else, I could be creating content, I could be writing something for my group." And then literally, it was so weird, I paused and I thought of you and I thought of Nidhi too and I just took a really deep breath and I said the words that you told me.

You were like, "The more you do, the less you resist, the faster you move, the more you'll embrace it." And I had to trick myself and I said, "I love this. I love editing this copy and giving the copywriter notes. I love having to go through this sales page. I love that it's taking me long. I love that I'm learning different ways to give direction better as a leader." And at the end of it, I felt fulfilled and aside from fulfilling the task, the fulfillment to get through that very micro situational dip, which is representation around this whole theme. So that's the long-winded answer on my economical use of the word avoidance.

Chris:

All right. I want to just make sure that Nidhi has some opportunities here to add to the conversation because we've been moving the mic around but not passing it to Nidhi. So Nidhi, what are your thoughts on this?

Nidhi:

Well, I mean I think that it really comes down to distress tolerance and being able to tolerate discomfort. And that I think part of entrepreneurship is being able to deal with discomfort of things that are out of our realm of expertise or things that don't come naturally to us. And I think, Mo, if you reflect back early on your entrepreneurial journey, there were probably other moments that were equally difficult that you were able to learn to tolerate and push through in order to get to a place where you've been so successful in your current business.

So I think what I'm taking away and what I hope the audience understands is just past that point of discomfort is really where the growth begins. And if you're able to tolerate doing the things that aren't so enjoyable, that inevitably are going to come with any business venture that you go into, there's no perfect job out there, there's no problemless job, so it's about getting comfortable with the challenges that are going to be in any position that you take, in any avenue that you go. So I just have appreciated the conversation and glad I could be the marshmallow in this talk. I really appreciate that.

Chris:

Well, before we had fire, we had gasoline, we had sticks. Now we have fire and we have marshmallow and hot chocolate. So I don't know what Mo is just yet, but we'll figure it out.

Mo:

Graham crackers. I'm Graham crackers.

Nidhi:

Chris, Chris, come on now

Mo:

Why do you never know what I am? I'm like, "Graham crackers, bro, the whole thing." Come on.

Chris:

I admit it, my dessert game is not on point. Just going to put that out there. Betina, you have the mic now. Go ahead.

Betina:

Thank you so much, Chris. I've been listening to these conversation with you and Mo, it's been so enjoyable to listen and I've known you guys for quite some time, especially you Chris. You're the only man who will keep me up past my bedtime on the East Coast so just so you know. And I've been following you for years and I know you through Jose Caballer from way back at the school on YouTube. And so what I'm about to share is for Mo, it's something that has helped me and I never knew it would help me years later. And so just so you know, I was thrown into the lion's den when I turned 18 so I don't have the traditional path. I didn't go straight to college out of high school. And so before starting my career in design, I worked in finance.

Initially my art teacher wanted me to go to art school. She saw how I loved drawing. My drama teacher wanted me to go to music or film school because I enjoyed theater. And so basically, I was in Glee club. However, my Business AP teacher wanted me to be "practical." She knew I wanted to move to New York City and be in the arts. And so she explained to me living in New York City is quite expensive and she didn't want me to be an artist in New York City. So I kind of did both. But while I moonlighted working in film and music, during the day, I worked as a financial analyst. I worked with majority of the financial institutions for years. So to some people, they would be like, "Well, how old are you exactly?" But anyway, I have a lot of experience. So just so you know, it was quite exhausting, quite hard to juggle a lot.

I didn't come from a rich family, middle class working family. I am an immigrant myself. And so just so you know that I didn't love it, but I had to hustle, I had to work. And so what I will say is this experience, working in the world of finance, and I'm talking about Wall Street, that's real, helped me make decision when I pivoted into the world of design years later. I watch successful financial traders and often they always state, as you all have heard, they use their gut instinct. I will tell you the truth, it's not gut instinct only. They have a wealth of knowledge. They use data, extensive research, observation to execute when the time calls. And so decision-making becomes easier for them with practice. And so don't get me wrong, there have been times money has been lost, but they do learn.

But when we're talking about billions of money for a company, they're not going to lose money for the institution. And so the reason I'm saying this is I will say kind of think about a financial trader. They may say that they use their gut instinct, but hard data is also, and research, R&D, is really important. That will determine the decision you make. It's the same thing I did when I pivoted into the world of design. I did follow my heart, but at the same time I had to look at some of the pros and cons of me starting my business and I did extensive research before I went and jumped the gun. And so thank you so much for taking the time to listen. I just wanted to share that with you and hopefully, you can do what you need to do, Mo.

Mo:

Yo, I'm super grateful for you sharing that story. Thank you so much and then sharing your experience with me as well because it gives me more of that data that I need to have discernment in my decision. So thank you.

Chris:

Yes, and thanks for staying up late. Tunji, question or a comment?

Speaker 11:

More like a question and a comment as well. So my question/comment is to Mo. Imagine this was to come out as a failure. How would you handle it? Would you be able to go for it a second time and with maybe more experience and with more zeal to succeed? So that's the first one. And then the other one is if it comes out as success, what would you do? What would be your possible next moves? Thank you.

Mo:

I may have to sit on that one. If it comes out as success, I'm going to keep doing more of it because I would've cracked the formula and then just optimize it and scale around it and continue to be of service. If it comes around as a failure, I'm not going to jump and ask questions, "What went wrong? What did I do wrong? How did I contribute to it being a failure? Did I lose sight of the goal?" All these different questions. Because the more and more I have these kind of conversations with such a high performing entrepreneur like Chris, I realize that failure is part of it. And if I look at it binary, like there's only failure and there's only success, rather than looking at failure as a lesson, then there's no room for me to continue to move. So that would be my answer right now. As I sleep on it, I may have something else, but that's where I'm thinking right now.

Speaker 11:

Okay, great. Excellent.

Chris:

Beautiful. It's time for us to get out of here. Before we get out of here, I'm going to give Mo a few minutes to formulate a freestyle wrap based on what he learned. We've been feeding him some lines so hopefully you'll be able to incorporate those lines together.

Mo:

Now everything's going to be you, your lines that you fed. No, I didn't even read those marshmallow bars that you put in the chat. Come on, son.

Chris:

As a challenge. As a challenge. That's what I'm saying, sweet and crispy, hanging with Nidhi.

Nidhi:

Oh my god.

Chris:

All right. All right. And without further ado, I believe it's time for Mo to do this.

Mo:

I'm going to just play a beat I have in the RØDECaster. So let's see if this-

Chris:

This should be good. All right, I'm going to mute myself. Take it away maestro.

Mo:

It's going to be short and sweet because I do have to tuck kids in. Okay, get clear. Hone your goals. It's getting old how you ponder and fold. Chip, stay in the pocket. Trust you'll find gold. Grow rich, grow old. Now lo and behold, you're here. You've made it. The story unfolds and everybody knows that you're trickling gold. Now don't stop, don't take the low road, take on the high road, do it as the show goes because it's the spotlight for you, the spotlight for me, the spotlight for I. And every time we do it, we're going try till death do us part.

If we fail and we do what? We're going get back up. Get back up if we fall. The rest is we going stand talk because it is strictly off the dough, I be out here popping like Chris Do with the Chris co and I got Nidhi right here. Am I right? People know that we going be up here, we going to fight, we going to keep the rhymes tight, we going to keep the bars right. Everybody know the game. This the biz fundamentals. I'ma keep going off the mental, no win, off the beautiful instrumental. And that's a wrap, literally and figuratively. We'll see y'all next time. Yeah, that's it. That's it, son.

Chris:

Well done, Mo. Well done.

Mo:

Look at that. That's what I got right now.

Chris:

That's it for us. Take care. Be well, take care of each other. Bye-bye.

Greg Gunn:

Thanks for joining us this time. If you haven't already, subscribe to our show on your favorite podcasting app and get a new insightful episode from us every week. The Futur Podcast is hosted by Chris Do and produced by me, Greg Gunn. Thank you to Anthony Barro for editing and mixing this episode. And thank you to Adam Sandborne for our intro music.

If you enjoyed this episode, then do us a favor by rating and reviewing our show on Apple Podcasts. It'll help us grow the show and make future episodes that much better. Have a question for Chris or me? Head over to thefutur.com/heychris and ask away. We read every submission and we just might answer yours in a later episode. If you'd like to support the show and invest in yourself while you're at it, visit thefutur.com. You'll find video courses, digital products, and a bunch of helpful resources about design and creative business. Thanks again for listening and we'll see you next time.

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