My Unhealthy Obsession with the Future

hey what is going on

my name is wes and i am the

entrepreneur’s entrepreneur when i was

in kindergarten i would walk my

wheelbarrow down to brookside park

dig up their dirt take out the weeds and

rocks and sell it to the gardeners

around the neighborhood as i entered

elementary school

i took up door-to-door shoe shining with

my buddy when middle school hit

we started doing an address curb

painting where we’d go door-to-door and

pass

out flyers with an envelope on it and if

anyone wanted their house number painted

to the curb

in glow-in-the-dark paint for safety

reasons we would come by the next day to

an envelope with twenty dollars in it

and we’d paint the address on their

curve without ever having to talk to

them

many of them were very surprised when a

child showed up

to do the job as high school hit i took

up web development card detailing and

lawnmowing

college transitioned me into the bar and

restaurant ownership

and then after college i transitioned

into high growth scalable startup

companies

i founded a business called beta blocks

which is a for

equity business incubator we help

startups get off the ground and provide

them with a wealth of assets that they

need to accelerate their progress

things like office space which i’m in

right now access to investors and

advisors each company that comes through

our doors pays us five percent of their

business

if they fail we make nothing if they

succeed then we take a pinch

i’ve been doing this for 10 years and

have acquired part of hundreds of

companies doing around 100 million

dollars a year money.com aka

time magazine referred to my operation

as a mini business

empire i’ve raised venture capital

dollars liquidated equity to a variety

of buyers and made a career out of it

i’ve never had a job by every

quantifiable mechanism available i’ve

succeeded except for one

and i’m working on it in my world the

only things that matter

are liquidations investments traction

growth

and attention we obsess over these

things

and they all have one thing in common

they take place in the future

when i first started after college i was

a young man i was an extremist

a risk taker and i’m still unfortunately

all of those things but back then it

would mean that i would put absolutely

everything that i possibly had into my

company

in my world there was little room for

family friends or hobbies it was just

work i would tell myself that

sacrificing all of those things was

going to be worth it because of the

feeling that would come

when i reached the finish line well as

we discussed earlier there are

three or four things that justify that

i’m here at that finish line

the things that i dreamt about for years

have been checked off my professional

bucket list

and was it worth it yes mostly but not

for the reasons that i had originally

thought the way i would describe the

finish line is anti-climactic

i remember the largest single check that

i received debatably the most important

characteristic

of a finish line after the check cleared

i hadn’t even told my wife

my friends don’t even know what happened

they’re probably gonna have to ask me

about this after watching this video

it was such an afterthought but how

could this be

how could the things that i sacrificed

everything for not even be worth

a facebook post to answer this i had to

do

a profound amount of introspection what

was wrong with me

the simple answer is i have an unhealthy

obsession

with the future over the last 10 or so

years i’ve developed insomnia

because i couldn’t stop obsessing over

the finish line when my head hit the

pillow

i wasn’t mindful or present with my now

wife god bless her patient soul

i let certain friendships drift away

from me because i internally mocked

their career paths

in comparison to mine i used to make

brad pitt and fight club look weak

yet i withered away because i claimed

that i didn’t have any time to work out

at the gym or eat right any longer

those were self-inflicted injuries

i thought that they were just the cost

of doing business but really they were

just the cost of my obsession with the

future

i wasn’t striving toward my dream i was

living it i just

didn’t realize it the only wake-up call

that i could get

was when i finally got there and it

didn’t feel

any different i had to stop and

reevaluate where i had misstepped

what i’ve learned is i am indeed proud

of my work and what i’ve accomplished

but not because of the things that come

when you reach the finish line

it was because of the journey itself i

thought back to the entrepreneurs that

i’ve helped i’ve thought back to the

employment creators of

employment opportunities that i’ve

created i’ve thought back to the

customers students lives were better

because

of the solutions that we manufactured

for them yes

i walk in the direction of the finish

line but my new

outlook on life is the finish line is

the walk

in any career we need to have an eye on

the future

the end goal or we don’t know where

we’re going

we also need to have an eye on the past

so we don’t continually make the same

mistakes

i think that where most people

understand

all that to the moat for the most part

but where they and myself have messed up

is what percentage of our care we put

into these things

i believe that we should put about five

percent into looking backward

about five percent looking forward and

care about what’s going on around us

today and this week and right now with

90

of our effort and resources we’ll be

better workers because we’ll actually

get the stuff that’s in

immediately in front of us done we’ll be

better family members and friends

because we’ll be more mindful of their

lives and appreciative of the time that

we get to spend with them

my attitude used to be that all of these

sacrifices and all this living in the

future was what made me a better

entrepreneur

it’s what made me different but looking

back i believe that with discipline

i would have been a better entrepreneur

had i lived

in the present caring too much about the

future makes you a perfectionist

you constantly want to tweak fix every

bug

create better and more beautiful design

but all of these things come

at the sacrifice of the things that that

actually

finish how much more could i have

accomplished if i’d finished more things

and

only perfected the stuff that required

it i see many entrepreneurs making the

same

mistake they write business plans for

years try to raise money without risking

any of their own and constantly put off

launching

because what they can create right now

doesn’t look

like what their dream or their future

product looks like

these habits result in failure 100

of the time the opposite end of the

spectrum is just as unhealthy

those with whom worry about the past

become paralyzed with fear

they’re worried anytime they see

something that looks similar to a

difficulty that they had in the past

and they slow down in an effort to

de-risk the opportunity which is

something that’s not

actually possible they take successes

that they’ve had

and constantly try and jam it into

whatever the present problem is because

they can’t imagine a world

where a new problem could require a new

solution

but it’s the entrepreneurs who obsess

over what’s happening to them right now

that

turn into the biggest winners they are

more observant of their customers and

those craft solutions

to what they’re actually asking for

they’re more mindful around partners and

collaborators which makes those people

want to risk more on them

making it easier to recruit the army

required to grow

they’re more mindful of their bodies and

thus can eat and exercise with enough

balance to sustainably keep up with

their demanding careers

and they’re more mindful with their

family and friends when it comes time to

being with them

rather than never actually really

shutting off when it’s time to shut off

i think back to the countless hours that

i spent dreaming about the

end and how to get there and then i ask

myself

how much value is actually created in

those

times the answer is a little but it’s

very it’s only valuable for a little bit

as it’s unveiling your map

telling you where to go but very quickly

once the map is presented itself

it’s time to put the thing in your

pocket and to start hiking

some people might refer to this as a law

of diminishing returns

so what does this mean for me

for me it means that i’m going to all

but forget about finish line

accomplishments and instead just enjoy

my work day i’m going to obsess

over the fulfillment and happiness of my

employees partners

and customers and i’m going to do all of

those things during appropriate

hours throughout the week all right

we’ll try and in between those blocks of

time i’m going to obsess with the people

in my personal life

what can i do to make their lives better

what can i do to see them

more often i’ve also started a series of

rituals in my day and week that i refer

to as

mental palate cleansers you know how

when you go wine tasting and they give

you certain things to eat or drink

between testing various wines so you can

actually taste the difference

well mentally speaking we need to

cleanse our palates

when it’s time to stop working and start

living your real

life so when i finish for the day i go

on long walks around the park often with

my wife

i take in the scenery i reflect on my

day i appreciate every leaf

tree and passerby as an alternative to a

walk i also use an

app called flow state systems which

provides me binaural beats

which is a fancy term for a type of

music that allows you to concentrate

whether it’s on work or relaxing so i

put on my headphones listen to the

relaxation

setting on the app for 10 minutes while

my brain waves sink out of work

and into the new present moment when i

finish it’s almost as

if my mind is rebooted and is ready to

start fresh

from there i can go out to dinner with

friends or attend a sporting event

or even just watch netflix and relax

without constantly thinking about

tomorrow

ironically this makes me more prepared

to take on tomorrow

and my last pallet cleanser of the day

is i use guided meditations before

bed to help me stop thinking period

because it’s time to literally dream

and to stop figuratively dreaming so

what does all this mean

or could mean for you for you it means

that you really need to evaluate whether

you’re on a path because of what your

life will look like when you reach the

finish line

or are you on a path where you like what

your life looks like

while you’re on the path itself think

about how crazy that sounds to think

that so many people myself included

choose the thing that defines their life

by what it will be like

when it’s over done or gone when you put

it that way it sounds ridiculous

but it happens all the time i hear

entrepreneurs say things like i’m gonna

build product a

which will give me enough money or power

to build product b

at which point i say why not just build

product b or i hear people say

that they’re just going to put in their

time and fill in the blank corporation

so that they can get a raise and a

promotion

to simply oversee just more people that

are putting in their time

i urge each and every one of you to set

down a path that to a certain extent you

enjoy every minute of

i urge you to be more mindful of the

things that you enjoy about your day

not what you enjoy about finishing it i

urge you to obsess with the little

things that you accomplish

every week rather than the big things

that happen every decade

i urge you not to sacrifice a single

unnecessary second with your family

and friends i urge each and every one of

you to have a healthy

obsession with what is in front of you

right now

and with that that is the end of my debt

talk thank you