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