Founder Insight gives you feedback from the startup trenches.
Why do we fail?
And more importantly, why we do fail repeatedly and what are the thematic patterns in our failures. Is it technical skills that we are lacking? Or is it something else? In this post from the Next Jump blog, CEO, Charlie Kim, explores the reasons why startup founder don't succeed.
Below, How to Kill Your Internal Terrorist (Part 1) has been republished.
"A lot of studies have been done to show that it is rarely technical…it is not b/c we lack presentation, coding, excel or powerpoint skills. It is almost always psychological. We make the wrong judgment calls when it matters most…these are what we call: Thematic Errors.
A mentor and close friend, Jim Loehr, arguably the world’s top behavioral psychologist, has spent over 30 years coaching and training elite athletes: in sports, medicine, military and business. He found the #1 cause of why we fail is our “Internal Terrorist”. No matter how many people tell us we suck or that we are victims, nothing is worse than what we tell ourselves. This is the “Internal Terrorist” perpetuating fear in our lives. Either paralyzing us or making us act as victims.
So the simple question is…how do we kill this terrorist?
ANSWER: Talk It Out
Not by yourself but with someone you trust. You trust them to have your interests even above their own. How many times have you said something to someone and they think “asshole” and then you see another person say the exact same thing and they’re like “wow, that’s exactly what I needed to hear, thank you”. And you’re like “what? that’s what I said…” The difference is trust. They trust, sometimes even in a stranger…that they are giving advice with intentions to help them vs boosting our own egos.
At Next Jump we created a program called: Talking Partners (TPs). Two people who MEET everyday, VENT out their toxins, and then get to WORK. The most critical step in all this is to talk out your toxins. The most common mistake is for the TP to try to solve and help vs just listen. VENT: Empathize and help you talk it out.
Ever have a good cry over something, nothing has changed but you feel better. This is the exact same thing, a problem in your life, shared and talked out b/w two people, allows for the poisonous toxins to come out of your system. In essence, you end up demystifying fear, bringing down the cortisol levels that have you in a fight or flight mode…you kill the internal terrorist. And yes, TP also stands for toilet paper..they take our shit.
Once that is done, you can get to work.
MEET, VENT, WORK.
What patterns have you seen in your repeated errors and how have you solved for them?"
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