Omer (00:11.840)
Welcome to another episode of the SaaS Podcast.
I'm your host, Omer Khan and this is the show where I interview proven founders and industry experts who share their stories, strategies and insights to help you build, launch and grow your SaaS business.
Today's episode is part two of the interview with Peter Shalard.
Peter is known as the shrink for entrepreneurs.
He's a renowned business psychology expert and therapist.
He works with all types of entrepreneurs around the world and helps them get measurable results.
He's also the founder of CommitAction.com, a service that pairs accountability coaching with cutting edge digital productivity tools.
In this episode, we talk about how entrepreneurs should be optimizing for courage instead of productivity.
We talk about what people like Bill Gates and Peter Thiel do that you're probably not doing.
How one idea or insight could significantly grow your business.
And we talk about five simple but powerful strategies to help you optimize for courage.
Now let's talk about a blog post that you wrote a while back.
It was, it caught my attention because it was called how to Find the Courage to Execute on Big Bold Plans.
And in there, let me just kind of quickly read a little bit of the instruction where you said, in my latest blog post, I argued that most entrepreneurs are optimizing for productivity when they should be optimizing for courage.
It turns out that how you spend your time hour to hour does not determine your success.
The only thing that matters is how willing you are to act courageously on extraordinary big ideas.
Can you talk a little bit more about that?
Guest (02:05.940)
Yeah.
So this is a concept I spend a lot of time discussing with different clients of mine.
And it really has a lot to do with the way that people who are sort of on the journey towards entrepreneurial success perceive that the.
How was the word for it?
Like the way that they perceive their sort of number one intention.
Because the thing about entrepreneurial success is it takes many years, right, to hit home runs and build multimillion dollar businesses and buy like a Ferrari or a gold plated Jet Ski or whatever floats your boat.
That takes a long time.
And we have to develop a way internally to feel good about ourselves week to week while we're on the journey.
We're kind of digging the ditch, hacking away at the job.
We're not kind of getting the result yet, right?
Like we're not all the way there.
But we have to have some internal mechanism for feeling good about ourselves on a Friday afternoon and deciding whether or not we deserve a beer and a break.
And for a lot of the people that I work with and a lot of the entrepreneurs out there, the metric for that is how busy was I?
How stressed out and overwhelmed do I feel if I feel like I spent the whole week absolutely running myself to the edge, burning the candle at both ends and I must be killing it.
I must be making progress.
I really deserve that beer.
The thing is that what I'm trying to say in that article is that that is not actually what makes entrepreneurial success.
And there's a very, very simple mathematical approach to understanding why Bill Gates has a net worth these days.
When I wrote the article, I think it was like 80 billion.
It's actually increased from the 60 or 70 people used to throw around as his net worth.
And he's not 800,000 times more productive than you are.
Like to get that net worth, he has not worked 800,000 times more hours than you or optimized his time that much more.
Like he's not just that much more busier.
And it's easy to see that when we look at this multi billionaire, right?
But the thing is that if you're at a place where your business is making 50 grand a year or 100 grand a year, or 500 or a million or whatever, whatever to get 2x that you don't necessarily have to work twice as hard.
You don't.
The way to level up your progress as an entrepreneur and continue to accomplish bigger and bigger results is almost never by simply being busier and working harder.
It's actually by thinking of innovative, incredibly leveraged exponential strategies that are going to rocket your business to the next level.
It's by really focusing on the product that you're building or the way that you're delivering the service or whatever it might be that's going to help you create exponential growth that'll get you to those rockstar results rather than just really focusing on how can I be busier, how can I do more?
There's this crazy thing, and I say this as the owner of a business all about productivity, but there's this crazy thing happening with the cult of productivity in the world these days where people are more obsessed the task management software and to do lists and their calendars and all of that than ever.
But all of that stuff is really missing the point, right?
It's kind of like taking the shell and leaving the nut that it really matters.
This idea of taking action on big courageous stuff is what you should be optimizing for.
And one of the things I like to say to my clients is that these Very type A personality.
People who work incredibly hard is I say to them, you could take every Wednesday off for the rest of your life and still achieve phenomenal like 8, 9 figure success if that's what you want to do.
Because your ability to create that success is not dependent on working Wednesdays really, really hard.
You know what I mean?
In fact, you could take a whole week off if simply on Monday morning you have one incredible idea that you execute on and that rockets your business 3x forward or whatever it is that innovative courage kind of moonshoot of an idea that's high risk and high reward, an asymmetric kind of investment that offers just this incredible upside.
And it's those things that entrepreneurs, it's finding those ideas and executing on them that we need to be optimizing for as entrepreneurs.
And once we think about, well, how do I optimize for that, how do I get my mindset in a way where I'm focused on doing those things and not just being busier?
We start to realize that our priorities shift incredibly.
We spend a lot more time reading, a lot more time learning, a lot more time in dialogue with really smart people.
Peter Thiel did a phenomenal interview on Tim Ferriss podcast a little while ago.
And one of the things that really jumped out at me about it that he said was that I think the question was something along the lines of what are sort of daily rituals and habits that you do?
And you know, Tim is obsessed with productivity and all that kind of stuff.
So that makes sense.
But what Peter said was astounding was that he spends a lot of time every day in dialogue on the phone or in real life with people, with incredibly smart people who see the future in unusual ways.
Where he spent years in dialogue with these people, exploring ideas and figuring stuff out and thinking about the future and trends and stuff like that.
And that's what this billionaire spends his time, time doing.
And I think that that's a phenomenal approach to business success for an entrepreneur to think about.
That's what Peter Thiel does.
And so if you catch yourself squeezing your calendar full of little things to do and feeling really run ragged and super busy and working 10 hour days, just remember that the billionaires of the world, the people who have really, really done something huge, they optimize for having smart conversations with people and kicking back and going deep with their, with their buddies.
Omer (08:06.690)
So how do we optimize for courage and come up with some of these great ideas?
Now you outlined five strategies that people can use to achieve this and the first one was you called out share an opinion of yours that most people don't agree with.
And I guess this is the point maybe that you're talking about with Peter Thiel.
Guest (08:31.770)
Yeah, so the thing about the article you're referring to and the idea of executing on these courageous things is that it's thinking big that really helps entrepreneurs move forward.
And to do that, we have to be courageous.
And most people aren't nearly as bold as they think they are that taking action on these really huge, high risk, high reward kind of opportunities is what pays off.
And so the tips that I shared in that article, and you should, I guess you could link to it in the show.
Notes of this, this interview are all about how do you basically flex that, that courage muscle?
Like how do you build up your internal capability and ability to, you know, really, really take risks on things and be not reluctant to kind of dive into those high risk situations.
And so that first one was, you know, share an opinion of yours that most people don't agree with.
And that, that really came from my experience as a blogger that I would often have something in my mind that I wanted to write about that I realized was very counterintuitive to a lot of people that in fact other smart people had said, do the opposite of this.
And so for me to sit down and write that out and say, hey, everyone is wrong, and here's what I think, and here's why you should agree with me, is an incredible exercise in having to build up, build up the courage to actually hit that publish button and share those thoughts.
That's just one exercise.
And it's never been easier for entrepreneurs to self publish on places like medium.com and all that kind of stuff.
So if you want to test the waters of really doing something courageous, try sharing an idea, an opinion of yours that folks don't agree with.
Omer (10:14.550)
That's a great one.
Okay, so the second point you made was eliminate the enemy's of courage.
What do you mean by that?
Guest (10:23.400)
Yeah, so the idea was that there's a lot of mental kind of connections between anxiety and stress and depression and that you can basically become more of a courageous person by removing a lot of the other things from, by removing those other things from your life.
So it's difficult if you're really stressed out, which is different to being kind of afraid.
Right.
Just simply being overwhelmed and stressed.
It's very, very difficult to actually be the kind of entrepreneur who can sit down and really think about what marketing strategy can I do that's going to have a 10x or 100x return on investment for the time and energy and money I put into it, or what product can I build or some kind of crazy big idea that could pay off.
So you've got to get rid of your own stress and those internal issues and have that clear head to be to think about it.
So one of the, you know, I recommend for, you know, for people to look into exercise and meditation and any of those practices that help really chill you out and center you, because you have to have that to begin that process.
So I think that, you know, if you're an entrepreneur, a lot of people think that entrepreneurship is about putting everything else in life aside while you go after the business and, you know, late nights, writing code, eating pizza, drinking Red Bull and all that kind of stuff.
But the thing is, is that that'll make you a very productive worker bee.
Right?
It's great to have people who work for you who have that philosophy.
But an entrepreneur needs to actually be on top of the physical health stuff, Be exercising and working out the body so that the mind will be quiet, you know, be finding time to really meditate and practice mindfulness and get that clarity so that they can think clearly.
Omer (12:12.270)
Do you think mindfulness is a fad?
I mean, we hear a lot about it in the business world these days.
What are your thoughts on that?
Guest (12:23.390)
I think that I don't really know what mindfulness is.
I think mindfulness meditation is a pretty well articulated and described practice, and there's a lot of solid research around it.
It's probably, you know, mindfulness meditation is actually one of the most researched forms of meditation in terms of the psychological, neurological outcome of the practice.
And there's a lot of really phenomenal stuff that it does.
One of the well documented kind of phenomenon is that people who regularly practice mindfulness meditation actually experience a shrinking of the amygdala, which is the part of our brain that regulates our fight or flight response.
And the idea is that when the, you know, when our brain, when any part of our.
When any part of our kind of behavioral activity becomes less frequent, the brain response, the part of the brain responsible for doing that, loses, kind of loses density or shrinks in some way.
And so they're seeing that, that literally there's a physiological change in people who regulate that, their fight or flight response.
That lizard brain that some people call it, which is actually a pretty accurate metaphor for what it is, is actually starting to shrink and get smaller, which I think is profound and something we should all be pursuing.
So this idea of practicing mindfulness and life, I think it's such an ambiguous term.
I don't know what it means, but really.
But the actual practice of mindfulness meditation is pretty powerful.
Omer (13:49.670)
Yeah, I meditate and it's something I started about a year ago where I'll.
I pretty much start every day with, with 20 minutes of, of meditation or, or some quiet time.
And I think over the last year, I've probably only missed three or four days.
And it's like, I. I've got to say, hands down, it's one of the best things that I've ever done.
Okay, let's talk about the next point.
So go social skydiving to grow your own thick sk skin.
Guest (14:25.230)
Yeah, this is a concept a client of mine actually taught me about, which was really cool.
We were talking about some of this stuff and they were saying that this is something that they do.
Basically you can train yourself to.
We have a lot of internal kind of barriers based on our past, our upbringing and all that kind of stuff, sort of social context that we're painfully aware of that prevent us from being courageous and I think are really important experience in the.
If you're interested in building your ability to take action on scary stuff, is actually taking action on scary stuff and having the.
Having the experience of an outcome that really isn't all that bad.
Right.
So that's like the reason that a lot of entrepreneurs are into bungee jumping and skydiving and stuff like that, because all of these things are metaphors for, you know, like sometimes you have to do something where your body, that lizard brain, is screaming, no, don't do it.
This is dangerous.
But actually it's totally safe.
It's a great metaphor for business.
There's a lot of stuff that looks terrifying on, you know, when we're sort of examining it in real time.
But if we actually just dive in, we're always going to be okay.
Then the worst possible, worst case scenario is never as bad as we think it's going to be.
So social skydiving is literally that it's basically putting yourself into a situation where you're socially kind of having to interact with other people in uncomfortable initially, but ultimately really fulfilling ways.
And I think the easiest way for most people to do this is just take the lead on introducing yourself to strangers.
If you're at a bar or a cocktail party or, you know, like any place like that, just put yourself into a.
Like you kind of leap out of the plane by just looking someone in the eye, extending your hand and Saying, hi, I'm Peter.
How's it going?
What's your name?
You know what I mean?
And a lot of people feel a lot of resistance to that.
If you're cool with that, there's other ways you can, you know, take it to the next level, jump into, like, a large group of very good friends and introduce yourself to all of them or whatever.
That social skydiving basically just forces you to confront the part of your brain that's.
That's sort of terrified of being rejected or ostracized or kicked out of the tribe in some way.
So it's.
It's sort of forcing yourself through it, and then you get to the fun, the good part, the spontaneous social interaction that feels good on the other side.
And it's really just a metaphor.
You're just conditioning yourself to kind of really understand.
There's a lot of stuff that feels scary initially, and then once you do it, it's really rewarding.
And it's just.
That's so true in business that if you can condition yourself to be okay with that and, in fact, even positively anticipate it, it's going to be a really.
It's going to be a really good thing to do, basically.
Omer (17:15.030)
Yeah.
I mean, that one really resonates with me.
You know, I was a guy for most of my life where, you know, I couldn't even think about publishing a blog post because somebody might criticize it.
Guest (17:27.270)
Right on.
Omer (17:28.070)
And actually doing something like this.
If you'd said to me a year ago, hey, I'd be doing this podcast, I wouldn't believe you.
Guest (17:35.750)
Right.
Omer (17:35.990)
I mean, in terms of just getting out there and recording this stuff, it was just.
It was so outside of my comfort zone.
But it was something that I felt that I really wanted to do, and I had to push myself to do it.
And, you know, I. I still cringe when I hear my own voice.
After doing even all of these episodes, but particularly the early ones, when I was initially interviewing people, I had, like, a list of questions, and I was, like, you know, frantically, and I was, you know, going through that list and being really anxious about what I was going to ask that person next, that I was actually not paying that much attention to what they were telling me.
Guest (18:14.200)
Right.
Omer (18:14.600)
And eventually it got to a point where I became a lot more comfortable with the process, and now it doesn't seem scary at all.
And I'd say it's one of the most amazing experiences that I've had, not just in terms of growing personally, but also connecting with so many Amazing people and learning so much from them that I'm so glad that I did it right.
So if you're listening to this and you know there's something deep down that you should be doing, maybe today's the day to get started.
Guest (18:44.580)
Right on.
Omer (18:45.940)
All right, so let's quickly wrap up on the last two points.
So the next one was Find Courage Buddies.
Guest (18:52.660)
Yeah, so this one, there's sort of two layers to this.
Like, one of them is just that if you, you know, you're just as we've all heard, your income is supposed to be the average of the five people you spend the most time with.
If you hang out with really courageous people who do courageous stuff, they'll eventually rub off on you.
But the more kind of detailed and sort of interesting insight here is that a lot of people who are starting businesses, as we discussed today, seek out community.
They seek out masterminds.
They look for folks that they can hang out with.
And that's a good thing to do for the most part.
The problem with it is that a lot of like the sort of intuitive approach for most people is just to try and aim to connect with the most successful person you know they possibly can with stuff in common with them.
And often it's just the stuff in common with them.
So you'll get software guys who start hanging out with software guys and they're sort of like, what are you working on?
The person says it's a software project.
Okay, great, we should meet up and talk about our businesses and be friends and hang out and look, there's nothing wrong with being friends with people.
But the thing about looking for Courage Buddies is rather than looking for someone who does the same thing as you, or who's at the same stage that you're at, or who's really like as successful as you'd like a mentor to be, look for somebody who's doing a lot of really courageous stuff.
Because early in the game, those people often won't look that successful.
They might actually be failing a whole bunch.
They might be trying a lot of really, really crazy ideas and hitting the wall with a lot of them.
And that means that short sighted people will look over those folks as an opportunity to network and kind of connect with them, they'll think, oh, I want to stay away from that crazy person.
But the funny thing is, when you move up the kind of entrepreneurial learning curve and you get to meet the people who have been in the game for 10, 15, 20 years, who are absolute rock stars and are killing it, you'll notice that only the people who remain in the room at that point, ultra courageous folks who have done incredibly risky stuff where it's paid off.
And so I think the real message is for those of you who are just starting out and you're looking for your tribe, you're looking to build a community.
Really think about not just aligning yourself with people who might be a few steps ahead of you.
Go hang out with the guy who seems crazy enough to do really big things and take a lot of risks because there's an incredible lesson in that and you need that to rub off you as well to build a really, really powerful business that is, you know, that is massively and exponentially successful.
Omer (21:25.630)
That's solid advice.
And then finally, the last point was read about courage.
Guest (21:32.510)
Yeah, I think, I think that a lot of entrepreneurs are starting out, read lots of tactical how to guides and business books that talk to them about different strategies and that kind of stuff.
And honestly, I hate all of that.
I don't read a lot of that.
Really.
I read very little of it now.
And I think that, you know, one of the best types of nonfiction reading that we can do is, is picking up sort of biographies or stories, you know, even fictional stories of people who are doing incredibly courageous, high risk things and sort of marinating our brain in those narratives.
The unconscious mind loves metaphor.
It's why when we watch a really compelling movie, it makes us feel something on the inside.
We walk out of the theater thinking, maybe I should live my life a little bit differently, or whatever it is hits us in a way.
And reading is a way to really just put your mindset in a place you want it to be.
So fill your head up with stories of courageous people doing courageous stuff and you're literally activating the very same parts of the brain and building connections between those parts of the brain when you're reading about it that will be used when it comes to you actually doing the courageous thing, implementing that crazy business idea and rolling the dice on, you know, some incredible, incredible startup with the promise of high reward.
So, yeah, about courage.
Omer (22:56.930)
Great.
Thanks for sharing that, Peter.
That's excellent advice.
And I will include a link in the show notes to that post for folks to go and check out.
All right, it's now time for our lightning round.
I'm going to ask you a series of questions and I'd like you to answer them as quickly as possible.
Guest (23:14.360)
Okay, cool.
I'm excited.
Let's do it.
Omer (23:16.680)
What's the best piece of business advice that you ever received?
Guest (23:23.080)
Find Your superpower.
It was given to me by Seth Godin and it was the way that I found the shrink for entrepreneurs.
Those few words as a personal brand.
So find out your superpower, that thing that you're the absolute best at.
That was probably the best business advice.
And I don't know if I'm taking too long.
But to add on to that, he also told me, if you don't know what it is, talk to the clients, the customers you have who love what you do because they already know what it is.
Omer (23:51.080)
What book would you recommend to our audience and why?
Guest (23:55.480)
I would recommend Spent Sex, Evolution and Consumer Psychology because it's one of the most eye opening reads on what really motivates people to buy stuff.
And if we're entrepreneurs, we need to understand that from a point of view of evolutionary psychology, it will blow your mind.
The author's incredibly cynical, so take it with a grain of salt.
But it's a really good one.
Omer (24:14.090)
Spent it's called what's one attribute or characteristic in your mind of a successful entrepreneur?
Guest (24:24.650)
Conscientiousness is important, an ability to delay gratification, but not too much.
I think that an entrepreneur has to be someone who's willing to work hard at something for a future reward payoff.
And the other thing is courage.
They have to not be risk adverse.
Basically, that's probably the two most important traits.
Omer (24:44.570)
What's your favorite personal productivity tool or habit?
Apart from commit action?
Guest (24:52.889)
Apart from commit action?
Honestly, probably just my calendar.
I have a really cool setup and I think that that's all you need is like I just use iCal.
I put in appointments and I kind of live my life by the calendar.
It tells me where I need to be and what I've prom do.
It's a place just for commitments where you have to show up for another person.
And if it's not that, it doesn't belong in the calendar.
Omer (25:17.350)
If you had to start over tomorrow, what type of business would you go and build?
Guest (25:26.630)
I'm actually pretty happy with what we're doing with commit action, but I'm really excited.
I'm really interested in.
I think SaaS businesses are really exciting.
The idea of there's nothing quite like that recurring monthly revenue that's exciting.
And I think that there's some fun things about building a tribe of loyal customers who you're working with every month and rolling out new features.
And we're incorporating some of the sort of structure of a SaaS business into what we do anyway.
So that's probably what I would do if I was starting from scratch today.
Omer (25:57.110)
What's an interesting or fun fact about you that most people don't know?
Guest (26:01.910)
That most people don't know?
I race the world's longest downhill ski race in Switzerland every year.
It's 12 miles long, and it's called the Inferno because of what it does to your thighs.
So every January, at the end of every January, that's what I do.
Omer (26:20.010)
How long does it take you to get down to 12 miles?
Guest (26:23.930)
Last year, I did it in 21 minutes, which I was pretty happy with.
Omer (26:29.370)
So how fast were you going?
I'm trying to do the math here.
Guest (26:32.330)
I know I'm actually bad at it because I think in kilometers and, you know, like, I do everything metric as a New Zealander, so I can't wrap my head around it.
But I know that the average.
I know that the guy who wins the race, who's much, much quicker than me, averages over 60 miles an hour for the entire.
Like, that's his average.
It's like 61, 62.
So I don't even know how that's possible, but I know that it means at the start of the race where it's the steepest, he must be hitting, like, upwards of.
Yeah, I don't even know.
Like, it must be, like, 150 kilometers an hour, say.
I just do kilometers.
Like, he's.
He must just be absolutely burning it.
So the guy who wins it is.
Last year, he was in the Swiss Olympic ski team, so I don't feel too bad that I'm, like, half as fast as he is, but it's okay.
Omer (27:21.910)
And finally, what is one of your most important passions outside of your work?
Guest (27:27.030)
Probably the skiing.
Actually.
That's my number one thing, that I'm absolutely bananas for it.
I love it.
I try and get out as often as I can in the winter, and I feel sad when it starts getting sunny and warm out.
So I'm pretty crazy for skiing.
Omer (27:42.120)
All right, Peter, those are great answers.
I want to thank you for joining me today and sharing your experiences and insights with our audience.
And thank you for letting us get to know you a little better personally as well.
Guest (27:51.800)
Yeah, of course.
Omer (27:52.680)
If folks want to find out more about your business, either on the, you know, the consulting therapy side, or they want to find out about time commitment, what's the best way for them to do that?
Guest (28:07.550)
So I have two homes on the Internet.
One is just petershellard.com.
that's my personal site with the shrink for entrepreneurs.
You can read my blog articles, and if you want to look at working with me.
All of the information is there.
There's some ebooks that you can download about business psychology as well or just Google the shrink for entrepreneurs if you want to get there the fastest.
And if you want to check out Commit Action, we're@commitaction.com we're currently offering, we do free kind of giveaway where you can put your email address in and we'll send you a series of video training that are all about the kind of pillars of productivity that we use this sort of research based methodology to help our clients become more productive.
And our idea is we just want to teach it to people so they can use it themselves.
If they love it and want help implementing it, they'll sign up for a coaching membership.
But you can just go grab all of that stuff for free there as well.
Omer (29:02.420)
And what's the best way for folks
Guest (29:03.900)
to get in touch with you@petershallard.com you can get in touch there on the contact page.
I think it might have my email or a form that you can fill out.
Either way it just goes straight to me.
So that's the best way to do it.
Or you can hit me up on Twitter at any point.
PETERSELLARD and yeah, I'm pretty easy to get a hold of.
You can email me through the site.
Omer (29:24.820)
Awesome.
Peter, thanks again for joining me and I wish you continued success in the future.
Guest (29:29.700)
Yeah, thanks for having me, it's been great.
Omer (29:31.700)
Cheers.
