B-Side: Defending the hustle
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Defending the hustle
"I Got a Girl in a Mississippi Town
Marine corps life was getting her down
She said it was either me or the corps
I wonna go back to Mississippi no more."
Above is an excerpt from a Marine Corps running cadence that my dad and I would listen to when I was a kid. While I have more good memories than bad, this missive is emblematic of my tough childhood—where dedication to mission above all else was paramount, even above empathy for the weakness of a seven year old.
We were the classic, blue-collar family, where having fun equated to unadulterated work. Yard work, car work, house work—the type of work didn't really matter as long as you kept working.
When you weren't working, your directive was to learn in order to get better at working. To this day my Dad's hobbies, even during retirement, involve welding, building, and reading old textbooks on sheet metal, HVAC, and anything he needs to know to do his trade that he no longer officially practices better.
Just to show you how far he goes, when I brought him to New York City for the first time during Fleet Week (he's also a Navy retiree), the most exiting part of the trip was the two hours he spent talking to an HVAC engineer who was on his smoke break. They discussed the water pressure of the different buildings throughout the city. When I finally got him on a bus tour, the only question he asked the tour guide, who couldn't stop talking about Bette Middler was, "How do the Tribeca water tanks impact the seven pounders per foot of water pressure compared to uptown."
The man does not stop.
He's basically Jiro from Jiro Dreams of Sushi, but the Midwest edition.
While growing up with this type of dad had a lot of downsides, he instilled in me an absolute, unfettered dedication to mission and the hustle to pursue that mission.
Hustle isn't a dirty word
Yet, I'm troubled by how this hustle has been twisted into a dirty concept. Monk-like dedication to one's craft is now derided with viral New York Times articles that ask "Why are young people pretending to love work?" We publicly shame those on social media who let slip their work habits and dedication, painting them as toxic actors who spew hustle porn.
Don't get me wrong, toxic actors do exist out there, but most of us truly in the perpetual trenches don't broadcast. We love our work. We seized the opportunity that those who came before us gave us to have vocation, instead of just working to survive. We've dedicated our lives to a singular mission knowing we may fail. We only rest, work out, or take up interests to maintain the 60-80 hour work weeks, surrounding ourselves with family and friends that accept our journey.
I feel some of you pushing back and bristling at the above as problematic, so let me put this in another lens:
–Is anyone asking Lebron James if he's finding balance or taking a day off?
–How about Elon Musk? Is he spending enough time with his kids?
–How about Marissa Mayer?
Well, she's a woman so when she puts a nursery outside her office so she can run an enormous company and spend time with her children, we need to judge her as a bad mother (sarcasm very much intended, but this is how the tech media covered the move she made at Yahoo).
My point is this: I think we'd all benefit from not judging others for the lifestyle choices they make. If you're ok with a white picket fence, 9-to-5 where you rarely need to sacrifice family time, then more power to you. Yet, if your mission is to be in the top one percent or one percent in your field, then we should equally celebrate you. We shouldn't ridicule you.
The secret becomes being willing to sacrifice what's needed to get what you want, and if you're not willing to sacrifice, then accepting yourself for who you are—tradeoffs and all. Misalignment on these axes is where problems emerge both individually and in our culture.
I for one know that ProfitWell wouldn't be where it is today without pushing my health to the brink, finding friends who didn't judge me for not partying until 2am, and plenty of sleeping at the office. I'm sure someone could have done what we did without these tradeoffs. I just know I couldn't.
Problems bubble up when we don't accept these tradeoffs. We end up wanting the fast growing company, but we're not willing to put in the work to get it. We want the white picket fence and to go play pickup basketball on the weekends, but we drown ourselves in work. This is where lashing out insecurely, inwardly and outwardly, takes place. We manifest these feelings in tearing down other's efforts, questioning each other's motives, and even judgmentally infantilizing agency with, "Well you're not being a good example to others."
Resentment builds.
Anguish endures.
Fear of expectations and failure creep in, killing the mind.
I get it. We all have these moments when we look in the mirror and have to face who and where we are in our journey. Rarely is the person staring back at us who we want to be in the end. So we hide; and when we hear or see someone being more disciplined than us or doing that which we should be doing for our own journey, it's easier to claim they're doing it wrong and hide our own insecurities further down.
Another path exists though—accepting yourself and the effort you're willing to put in for what you want.
What do you want out of life?
You need to know what you want out of life. I get it's hard and I wish someone would have asked me this growing up. It would have made life a lot easier with less pain. Yet, this is the only way to move forward and it ultimately needs to come from within.
Go down an emotional rabbit hole and figure out: What's important to you? What are your non-negotiables? If your'e on your death bed and you hadn't done X, would you be ok? If you got hit by a bus tomorrow, are you satisfied with your journey and what you've done?
Your life's mission will evolve over time. It's ok to change. Yet, each time your goal crystallizes your job is to stop hiding and apologizing for doing everything you feel needs to be done in order to optimize for that outcome. This includes surrounding yourself with not only business partners and a team that supports that mission, but with friends and family who accept your mission—tradeoffs and all.
For some of you reading these words, this means you need to reset and maybe even find a new career. You want something slower pace with less hours so you never miss a single activity with your kids or that hobby that you love. To some of the founders in this vein it may mean running your business as a "lifestyle business" for profit versus trying to go public. These are phenomenal options. Don't beat yourself up and keep the resentment brewing if that's what you want. Just do it.
Others of you reading this need to stop lying to yourself and those around you. You're going to keep missing those dinners or giving up that extra date night. Accept it and communicate your mission to those around you, so they can work within your mission. Some of the hardest-working executives I've met here in Utah are extremely family focused and are always home for dinner and don't work Sundays. They're at the office at 5am though, and workout in the middle of the day.
Their life aligns to the mission, because there isn't a soul on Earth who reached the pinnacle of their field without great sacrifice. You're not likely to be different, and you still might fail, but you need to try if it's your mission.
How we protect the hustle
Beyond doing the introspective work to understand how you can be unapologetic to yourself and those around you, here are a couple of things we've done at ProfitWell to help with these concepts internally:
- 9-to-5 roles vs. hustle roles
We have plenty of people who want to be the best in their field working at ProfitWell, as well as plenty of people who want the 9-to-5 route. It's rare you'll have a company that has all of one or all of the other, especially as you grow. We do a lot of coaching in helping folks, especially younger talent, determine what they want and then push them into roles that fulfill those aims. This also includes making sure coaching and expectation setting are aligned to the team member's mission.
As a side note, while a lot of roles can be filled by either type of person, there are some roles that require an "all-in" mindset. We're really up front with this in the hiring process. - Being all-in doesn't mean driving towards burnout
If you're all-in with a hustle-type role, this doesn't mean you drive until you hit a brick wall of burnout. Instead, you need to be conscious of your pacing and always keeping in mind that the journey is long. Vacations, getting rest, eating well, etc., all ensure you can keep the pace without burnout. I've personally found aligning these pieces around the missing ones keeps me motivated. For instance, I metalwork and woodwork because I learned doing something with my hands helps me reset my mind for deeper thought work. I also have been working on losing the 100 pounds gained in the early years, because I know the next phase is predicated on higher-energy work instead of just sheer, unadulterated will. - Know your resentment triggers (and that of your team)
When folks report to me I always have a conversation around, "What would the company push you to do that you'd then resent me or ProfitWell for?" Typically these are things like missing family dinner, working on Sundays (especially in our Utah office), not being able to workout each day, and the list goes on. Regardless of the person being more 9-to-5 or hustle focused, knowing these triggers helps keep a good working relationship between the person and the company. You'll also find hustle folks have less of these than 9-to-5 (which is perfectly ok).
You have agency
In closing, this all comes down to knowing yourself, which isn't easy. Yet, it's your job given that, if you're reading this you're definitely someone who has a choice. Do the introspection to know what you want and what you're driving towards. If you're ok with it, fantastic. If you're not ok with it, then change your expectation or your circumstance. You have agency.
In that vein, I'll leave you with an excerpt from my favorite Teddy Roosevelt speech—not "Man in the Arena", which I think is the weaker of these two speeches. Instead, it's from his speech, "The Strenuous Life":
"I wish to preach, not the doctrine of ignoble ease, but the doctrine of the strenuous life, the life of toil and effort, of labor and strife; to preach that highest form of success which comes, not to the man who desires mere easy peace, but to the man who does not shrink from danger, from hardship, or from bitter toil, and who out of these wins the splendid ultimate triumph."
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00;00;00;05 - 00;00;16;11
Patrick Campbell
For some of you listening to this, this means you need to reset and maybe even find a brand new career. You need slower pace, you need less hours, and that should be okay. And then there's others of you listening to this that got to stop lying to yourself and those around you because you're going to keep missing those dinners.
00;00;16;11 - 00;00;33;14
Patrick Campbell
You're going to keep giving up that extra date night. Yeah. Communicate to those around you and make sure that they accept it. Because if you don't in either direction here, you're going to end up just building resentment inside yourself. And that misaligned meant of what you want and what you're actually doing is just a disaster.
00;00;34;24 - 00;00;57;07
Ben Hillman
From profit will recur. It's protect the hustle where we explore the truth behind the strategy and tactics of being a business growth to make you an outstanding operator. On today's episode, we're diving deep on defending hustle culture, exploring how to better align what you want with the efforts you're doing, as well as how we'd be better off not judging others for the choices they make in business.
00;00;57;27 - 00;00;59;16
Ben Hillman
Patrick, take it away.
00;01;01;27 - 00;01;20;13
Patrick Campbell
Welcome back, everyone. To Protect the Hustle, the B-sides, just a little housekeeping. Want to remind everyone, as we get into the groove here, you're going to receive two episodes per week. This is the fourth week, I believe, that you're receiving these two episodes. The first episodes are always going to be an interview with someone in the B2B Sass trenches that we can learn from on a particular topic.
00;01;20;29 - 00;01;43;17
Patrick Campbell
The other episode is going to be me going deeper on a particular topic, essentially learning in public here either about something more executive presence or emotional in terms of building a company or going deep on data or strategic pieces of building our businesses. And so if you want to be on the mailing list, particularly because those B-sides always have a written component to them and sometimes have data or graphics.
00;01;43;20 - 00;02;01;08
Patrick Campbell
Go ahead and head over to protect the hustle dot com and just put your email address in there. Or if you're fine with the audio, just subscribe to whichever podcast, listening device or app of your choice. And if for some reason someone texted me that we want somewhere, let me know and we can make sure that the feed gets updated.
00;02;01;08 - 00;02;23;14
Patrick Campbell
But we should be 99.99% of everyone else is. So with that, let's get into it. Today we are talking about hustle culture and my defense of hustle culture, which might be a hard sell for some of you, but also an easy sell. And I want to open with something a little interesting. So listen here. I got a girl in a mississippi town.
00;02;25;03 - 00;02;54;09
Patrick Campbell
Marine Corps life was getting her down. She said it was either me or the Corps. I want to go back to Mississippi no more. That was an excerpt from a marine Corps running cadence that my dad and I would listen to when I was a kid. While I certainly have more good memories than bad growing up. This missive was pretty emblematic of a really tough childhood, and let's just be upfront.
00;02;54;21 - 00;03;15;22
Patrick Campbell
It was a childhood where dedication to mission above all else was paramount, even above empathy for the weakness of a seven year old. We are the classic blue collar family where having fun equated to just pure, unadulterated work. And I know some of you relate to that. Yard work, car work, housework. You know, the type of work didn't really matter as long as you kept working.
00;03;15;27 - 00;03;43;12
Patrick Campbell
And what was always interesting is when you weren't working, your directive was to learn in order to get better at working. To this day, my dad's hobbies, even during retirement, involve welding, building and reading old textbooks on sheet metal, AC and anything he needs to know to do his trade that he no longer officially practices better. Just to show you how far this man went and continues to go, when I brought him to New York City for the first time during Fleet Week, he's also a Navy retiree.
00;03;43;16 - 00;04;08;00
Patrick Campbell
The most exciting part of the trip was the 2 hours he spent talking to an ABC engineer who was on a smoke break. They discussed the water pressure of the different buildings throughout the city, and when I finally got him on a bus tour, the only question he asked the tour guide who, you know, couldn't stop talking about Bette Midler was, quote, How did the Tribeca water tanks impact the £7 per foot of water pressure compared to Uptown?
00;04;08;10 - 00;04;33;05
Patrick Campbell
Put simply, no, the man doesn't stop. He's basically the Jiro Dreams of Sushi but Midwest edition. And while growing up with this type of dad had a lot of downsides, he instilled in me this absolute, unfettered dedication to mission and the hustle to pursue that mission. And the reason I'm talking about him today in this topic is because I personally am troubled by how this hustle has been twisted into a dirty concept.
00;04;33;11 - 00;04;59;04
Patrick Campbell
Monk like dedication to one's craft is now derided with viral New York Times articles that ask Why are young people pretending to love work or publicly shaming those on social media who let slip their work habits and their dedication in painting them as these toxic actors who spew hustle porn? And don't get me wrong, these toxic actors do exist out there, but most of us truly in the perpetual trenches don't broadcast.
00;04;59;07 - 00;05;28;20
Patrick Campbell
We love our work. We seize the opportunity that those who came before us gave us to have vocation instead of just working to survive. And we've dedicated our lives to this singular mission, knowing that we might fail. We only rest, we only work out, or we only take up interests to maintain a 60 to 80 hour workweek surrounding ourselves with family and friends that accept this type of journey and the big reason I'm talking about this today is because I know that some of you are pushing back.
00;05;28;20 - 00;05;53;04
Patrick Campbell
I know some of you are bristling as you hear this. So let me put this into a different lens. Is anyone asking LeBron James if he's finding balance or taking a day off? How about Elon Musk? Is he spending enough time with his kids? How about Marissa mayer? Well, she's a woman, so when she puts a nursery outside her office so she can run an enormous company at Yahoo!
00;05;53;04 - 00;06;13;26
Patrick Campbell
And spend time with her children, we need to judge her as a bad mother. And before you get ahead of this, sarcasm is very much intended. But what's really interesting is this is how the tech media covered the move when she was at Yahoo! And if I had to kind of summarize this point so we can unpack it a little bit more, I think we would all benefit from not judging others for the lifestyle choices that they make.
00;06;14;02 - 00;06;32;22
Patrick Campbell
If you're okay with a white picket fence 9 to 5 where you rarely need to sacrifice family time, then more power to you. Yet if your mission is to be in the top 1%, let alone the top point 1% in your field, then we should equally celebrate you. We shouldn't ridicule you. And to me, the secret becomes being willing to sacrifice.
00;06;32;22 - 00;06;53;01
Patrick Campbell
What's needed to get what you want. And if you're not willing to sacrifice, then accepting yourself for who you are. Trade offs and all. And where I find the most trouble is in the misaligned bent of these axes where these problems emerge, both individually in our culture. Because I for one, know that profit while wouldn't be where it is today without pushing my health to the brink.
00;06;53;01 - 00;07;11;12
Patrick Campbell
Finding friends who didn't judge me for not wanting to party until 2 a.m. and plenty of sleeping at the office. And I'm sure someone could have done what we've done without these trade offs. I just know I couldn't. Problems bubble up. When we don't accept these trade offs, though, we end up wanting the fast growing company, but we're not willing to put in the work to get it.
00;07;11;23 - 00;07;32;17
Patrick Campbell
We want the white picket fence and to go play pickup basketball on the weekends, but we end up drowning ourselves in work. This is where we end up lashing out insecurely, both inwardly and outwardly. We manifest these feelings and tearing down others efforts, questioning each other's motives and even judgmental infantilizing agency with quotes like, Well, you're not being a good example to others.
00;07;33;29 - 00;07;54;21
Patrick Campbell
Resentment ends up building, anguish endures, fear of expectations and failure end up creeping in and therefore kill the mind. And I get it. We all have these moments when we look in the mirror and have to face who and where we are in our journey. And rarely is the person staring back at us, the person we want to be in the end.
00;07;55;02 - 00;08;15;15
Patrick Campbell
So we end up hiding. And when we hear or see someone being more disciplined than us or doing that what we should be doing for our own journey, it's easier to claim that they're doing it wrong and hide further down our own rabbit hole of insecurities. Another path exists, though. It's a path that I've already alluded to and that's accepting yourself and the effort you're willing to put in for what you want.
00;08;15;26 - 00;08;37;01
Patrick Campbell
You need to know what you want out of life, and it's hard. I get that It's hard, and I wish someone would have asked me this growing up. I don't think my teachers, my coaches, my parents, no one spent any time asking me what I wanted or asking me to be introspective, to figure out what I wanted. Yet this is the only way to move forward and it ultimately needs to come from within.
00;08;37;11 - 00;08;56;12
Patrick Campbell
So what I want to encourage you to do this week, over the weekend, some of you might be listening to this over the weekend is go down an emotional rabbit hole and figure out what's important to you. What are your non-negotiables? What are those things that if you don't do them or you don't have access to them or they aren't a part of your identity, you are going to fall apart.
00;08;57;08 - 00;09;15;14
Patrick Campbell
If you're on your deathbed and you haven't done X, would you be okay with that If you got hit by a bus tomorrow? Are you satisfied with the journey that you've made and everything that you've done? This is probably going to be more than just a weekend activity, but I know that I didn't unlock my own kind of I don't know if it was quite happiness, but my own fulfillment of my own journey.
00;09;15;25 - 00;09;39;26
Patrick Campbell
I started answering these particular questions, and your life's mission is definitely going to evolve over time. It's totally okay to change you each time your goal crystallizes. Your job is to stop hiding and apologizing for doing everything you feel needs to be done in order to optimize for that outcome. This includes surrounding yourself with not only business partners and a team that supports that mission, but with friends and family who accept your mission.
00;09;39;26 - 00;09;59;01
Patrick Campbell
These trade offs and all and I like to think about this and I have a slide. If you're getting the written edition where essentially you have, you know what you want in the center and to give you some practical advice, this rarely is money. If it's money, you know, there's definitely a lot easier things to do than being an executive or being a founder of a company that you're trying to grow.
00;09;59;05 - 00;10;20;01
Patrick Campbell
But I've just found that when it was money for me, it wasn't really motivating. I had to move to kind of the second order or third order effects of really what I wanted to do. And for me, it's I love building, I love building things, I love seeing the growth. And so for me, it really is that growth and it really is that mission of building something voraciously and getting it to grow as quickly and big as humanly possible.
00;10;20;11 - 00;10;39;16
Patrick Campbell
And then around that, I made sure that I have the business partners in for and Peter, who are also on the same page, not wanting to just build a lifestyle business, wanting to dedicate as much time as humanly possible to the mission and also the team that supports that. We'll talk about that in a second. But then around them, you have to kind of set up your life and your lifestyle.
00;10;39;24 - 00;11;07;12
Patrick Campbell
So for me, I made sure my commutes are relatively short and small. I made sure that I set my training schedules and even my hobbies all in line with the mission that I'm going after. And then around that, I made sure that I found the right friends and the right loved ones. I actually gave up a seven year relationship, not all because of this, but in hindsight it was never going to work out based on this experience and based on going after what I wanted.
00;11;07;19 - 00;11;24;09
Patrick Campbell
Let go of some friends. I already alluded to and found friends who actually align and are okay with my mission and understand that I'm not going to be able to hang out all the time. But the quality of the time that we hang out is definitely going to be that much better. But the thing is, is this has to come from introspective reflection and that's really hard.
00;11;24;14 - 00;11;48;09
Patrick Campbell
But once you make that decision, it's time to not apologize for and for some of you reading or listening to this, this is going to mean you need to reset and maybe even find a brand new career. That's okay. I think that we oftentimes look at Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc., and we think, oh, I need to evoke this particular image and I need to be the leader.
00;11;48;09 - 00;12;18;10
Patrick Campbell
I need to change my title, the CEO. I need to found something. I need to do this. But you probably just want something slower pace with less hours so you never have to miss a single activity with your kids or that hobby that you love. And that's okay. And some of you listening to this, some of the exact same, some of the founders who want to be the best in the world, or at least in the top 1% of your field, that might mean that you're running your business way too much like a lifestyle business, and you need to pick things up and stop lying to yourself.
00;12;18;13 - 00;12;46;14
Patrick Campbell
That you want to create a very large company, but you're only putting so many hours in, you're going to keep missing those dinners. You're going to miss that extra date night. You got to accept it and communicate your mission to those around you so that they can work within your mission and you can stop letting them down because the expectation is, Hey, Jenny, you get this day and these nights and then you work within them and are present during those times because you don't feel like you're trying to do something.
00;12;46;15 - 00;13;03;02
Patrick Campbell
You're trying to be pulled apart and building that resentment with those loved ones around you and even internally in yourself. And before you think, Oh, you have to give up everything, I'm not saying you have to give up, but it's a balance. Some of the hardest working executives I met here since moving to Utah and opening our office here are extremely family focused.
00;13;03;10 - 00;13;23;11
Patrick Campbell
They're always home for dinner and they don't work Sundays. But all the other times they're at the office at 5 a.m., they work out in the middle of the day and they check email after dinner. They work sometimes on Saturdays, sometimes it's family time the entire weekend. Once you align, when your mission is all of a sudden, everything else can fall into place.
00;13;25;04 - 00;13;51;23
Patrick Campbell
And if your life aligns to the mission, you'll realize there isn't a soul on earth who has reached the pinnacle of their field. Without some sort of tradeoff or sacrifice, you're likely not going to be different, and you still might fail, but you need to try. If it's your mission and understand that it's okay to fail as long as you were unapologetic and went all and now, beyond doing this introspective work to understand how you can be unapologetic to yourself and those around you.
00;13;51;24 - 00;14;08;23
Patrick Campbell
There's a couple of things that we've found and have implemented at Prof as well to help with a lot of these concepts. The first thing is we have 9 to 5 rules and hustle rules. That's not quite what we call them internally. But I think just given the context of the things we're talking about today, it probably works pretty well.
00;14;09;01 - 00;14;22;16
Patrick Campbell
And what I mean by this is that we have plenty of people who want to be the best in their field working at Provo. Well, and then we also have a lot of people who want a 9 to 5 route. And it's rare that you're going to have a company that has all of one or all of the other, especially as you grow.
00;14;22;25 - 00;14;47;16
Patrick Campbell
So what we do is a lot of coaching, especially with younger talent, to help them do the introspective work to determine what they want, and then we push them into roles that fulfill those particular aims. This also includes making sure your coaching and expectations setting are aligned to the team members mission. So what I mean by that is we have, you know, someone named Neil who leads product or helps lead product, and this is someone who wants to be the best in his field.
00;14;47;19 - 00;15;07;22
Patrick Campbell
He wants to win, he wants to learn, he wants to grow. He wants a lot of responsibility. And because of that, our expectation for Neil is, yeah, sometimes, you know, we're going to defend, obviously your vacation time. We're not monsters, but sometimes there's going to be things late at night that you have to check. Sometimes there's going to be an emergency over the weekend, sometimes are going to be on call for certain things.
00;15;08;00 - 00;15;27;02
Patrick Campbell
And that's the expectation that's been set. And Neil has agreed. And actually that's the expectation he wants because he wants to be a part of that game. He wants to learn from us. He wants to try to be in those exact meetings as much as possible, all these different things. But we also have other folks and, you know, I'm not going to name names, but it's funny, I don't want to name names, actually, because there is no shame.
00;15;27;02 - 00;15;47;21
Patrick Campbell
But for some reason, our society has this double edged sword that when someone is aggressive and very open about that aggressive ness, they're heralded or just kind of, you know, destroyed by if someone is like, no, I like my 9 to 5. Like there's people who judge them. And so my instinct of not naming them is I know Neil's totally comfortable with me saying, Oh yeah, they're really aggressive, etc..
00;15;48;00 - 00;16;06;05
Patrick Campbell
But the first couple of people that popped in mind on the 9 to 5 mindset, I don't know if they're comfortable with me saying it. There's no reason that they shouldn't be comfortable with it, but I don't know if they are right. So that's kind of an interesting phenomenon given the things we're talking about. But let's just say we have some folks there, 9 to 5, and with those types of folks, we are very clear about cool.
00;16;06;05 - 00;16;26;14
Patrick Campbell
We're not going to contact on the weekend. We can figure it out Monday. They just have different expectations and there's different rewards, too. And that should be noted like your career is going to go slower if you're a strictly 9 to 5 person. And that's okay. Like, that's totally fine as long as you're okay with those trade offs, whereas Neil's career is going to go much quicker because he's, you know, he's attacking things left, right and center.
00;16;26;26 - 00;16;44;08
Patrick Campbell
So again, setting this expectation as well as like helping your team basically go through this thought exercise. There's other ways that people have talked about this. I think, oh my gosh, I have her face in her name right in my head. I just can't remember it. But she wrote the book Radical Candor. She talks about the rock star or superstar concept.
00;16;44;18 - 00;17;00;05
Patrick Campbell
Some people are on one path, other people are another path. She talked about this. She was interviewing for the job at Twitter, but I think she was having twins and she realized she could do it, but she didn't want to at that time. And that should be totally fine. It doesn't take away from her and her skill set, but she didn't want to like, take on that extra thing.
00;17;00;05 - 00;17;17;03
Patrick Campbell
She wanted to kind of relax a little bit more, not saying having twins is relaxing. I'm going to get some emails about that one. I'm just saying that she was someone who said, I want more family time right now. I don't want, you know, a brand new job or I want to have to redo the entire company. I want to just kind of focus on this particular part of my life.
00;17;17;08 - 00;17;37;19
Patrick Campbell
The second big thing that we did is really understand that being all in doesn't mean you're driving towards burnout. If you're all in with kind of like a hustle type role, this doesn't mean you drive until you hit a brick wall of burnout. Instead, you need to be very conscious of your pacing and always keeping in mind that the journey is long vacations, getting rest, eating well.
00;17;37;19 - 00;17;53;25
Patrick Campbell
All of these different things ensure that you can keep the pace without burnout, but you're still going to have to take that time off. You're still going to have slower periods in your career, even if you're going all in, even if you're in one of those hustle roles. I found personally that aligning these kinds of pieces around the mission keeps me motivated.
00;17;54;06 - 00;18;19;00
Patrick Campbell
For instance, I do metalwork and woodworking, and I do inherently enjoy those activities. But I learned very quickly that doing something with my hands helps me reset my mind for deeper work. And so there's some times where I just want to watch Netflix, but I actually will force myself to go do a woodworking project or go fix something because I know it's going to help me over that weekend or over that night reset for more thought work on the following work period.
00;18;19;13 - 00;18;38;14
Patrick Campbell
I've also been working on losing, you know, the hundred pounds here that I've gained in the early years, you know, because I know that the next phase of profit well is very predicated on high energy work instead of just sheer unadulterated will, which is the thing that got us here. Now, how does this manifest for you? It's more introspection, but it's also realizing that, you know, you're still going to need rest.
00;18;38;20 - 00;18;56;01
Patrick Campbell
It's not like, you know, you can just kind of keep pushing things, keep pushing things and keep pushing things and expect not to break. You definitely will break, but it's just a big, big thing to kind of think through in terms of like how you work. Now, the final piece here that I think is important is you should know your resentment triggers and the resentment triggers of your team.
00;18;56;07 - 00;19;12;25
Patrick Campbell
When folks report to me and a lot of the managers that profile well, I always have a conversation around what would the company push you to do that you would then resent me or profit well for and this is something I can't remember if I picked this up from that book I referenced, you really should remember who it is.
00;19;13;09 - 00;19;30;20
Patrick Campbell
Kim Scott That's the name of it. Radical Kanye or Kim Scott. So I don't know if I picked this up from Kim Scott or I know it's either Kim Scott, Marissa mayer or Clare Hughes Johnson I can't remember where I picked this up either when I was at Google with Marissa mayer and Clara Hughes. Johnson not working directly with them at all, just to be super clear.
00;19;31;03 - 00;19;51;24
Patrick Campbell
But you know, picked it up through the grapevine. Although the team I was on reported to Clare, who's Johnson, was just kind of cool or it was in Kim Scott book. But basically you know, having this conversation with folks to figure out, hey, what's this trade off with the company? And typically these are things like missing family dinner working on Sundays, especially in our Utah office, not being able to work out each day and the list might go on.
00;19;51;24 - 00;20;08;13
Patrick Campbell
So for Neal and I'm not saying this is exactly right, but, you know, if for some reason Neil couldn't you know, he's got a wedding coming up and if for some reason that he wasn't able to be out during his wedding, I'm sure he would resent the company and resent me for it. And there's no reason we're going to disturb Neil during his wedding or anything like that.
00;20;08;13 - 00;20;26;16
Patrick Campbell
But the big thing is these are probably pretty consistent. And regardless of if you're, you know, kind of a 9 to 5 or a hustle focused person, knowing these triggers really helps keep a good working relationship between the person and the company. And frankly, it helps you as a team member or as a leader understand where you can push and where you can't push.
00;20;26;27 - 00;20;51;04
Patrick Campbell
You will find that hustle, folks tend to have less of these, the 9 to 5 folks, and that's perfectly okay. That should be the expectation. But everyone has them and make sure you understand them and understand them for yourself so that you can, you know, bring them up to your team and to your manager as well. In closing here, this really all comes down to knowing yourself, which obviously isn't easy yet it's your job given that if you're reading this, you're definitely someone who has a choice.
00;20;51;17 - 00;21;14;13
Patrick Campbell
You're in a position where you're not digging ditches, you're not, you know, kind of doing construction to survive. Not that there's anything against those jobs. It's just you are in a position where you have been given the ability to have a choice and you've been given agency here to do this introspection. And I think you should, because you shouldn't waste the opportunity that you've been given from those folks who have come before you.
00;21;14;14 - 00;21;33;27
Patrick Campbell
You've got to do the introspection to know what you want and what you're driving towards. And if you're okay with it, that's great if those things all align. But if you're not okay with that, then change your expectation or your circumstance. You have agency, you have to use it. Now, in that vein, I leave you with an excerpt from one of my favorite Teddy Roosevelt speeches.
00;21;34;06 - 00;21;57;24
Patrick Campbell
It's not man in the arena, which is, I think, the weaker of this speeches instead is from his speech, I believe, to the Chicago Press Club, if I'm remembering correctly. It's titled The Strenuous Life. And here's one of the more popular excerpts from that speech. But I do recommend you check it out, because I think it's one of those things that's guided me a lot, especially coming from that blue collar family and, you know, being the next rung of the American dream as they say.
00;21;57;24 - 00;23;07;28
Patrick Campbell
So here we go. Let Teddy take over and.
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