#1 CEO Coach: Effort Isn't What Makes You Rich, Do This Instead | Joe Hudson

Joe Hudson (0:00)

Work ethic is way overrated. Wow. I know a lot of very successful people who do not do a lot of work at all. Effort is not the key. Make five or six great decisions a day, you can be incredibly successful.

Codie Sanchez (0:13)

Today's guest is Joe Hudson, one of the most sought after coaches who mentors founders from Mark Pincus to Sam Altman. You'll hear the actual advice to get these billionaire founders unstuck and the most difficult truth nukes he drops on his clients that we get to steal.

Joe Hudson (0:26)

The best way to learn how to make great decisions is to be comfortable with all the emotional states. If I'm like, I can't feel this kind of discomfort, I can't be sad, then I am not going to see that set of solutions. If I'm willing to feel everything, I'll make better decisions.

Codie Sanchez (0:41)

You coach billionaire CEOs, what do you tell them that the rest of us don't get to hear?

Joe Hudson (0:46)

That is a fantastic question.

Codie Sanchez (0:52)

One of the things you drill down on that I thought was really interesting, you call the golden algorithm. Can you explain what that is?

Joe Hudson (0:57)

So the thing that you're trying to avoid, especially in the motion you're trying to avoid, you invite in the exact way that you're trying to avoid it. So this is incredibly crippling for businesses.

So if you're trying to be like a conflict-avoidant CEO, which you are not, but like a conflict-avoidant CEO, they're constantly trying to avoid conflict and therefore, their firms are raging in conflict and dysfunction, as an example.

Codie Sanchez (1:24)

Fascinating, actually. So you basically become a mirror for the thing that you're trying to not have more than anything else.

How can you tell somebody is not conflict-avoidant that quickly? How can you classify somebody that fast?

Joe Hudson (1:37)

That's a really hard question. So if you watch the coaching videos of me online, so we have a couple hundred of them, you'll see me be able to read somebody's entire history with a sentence or two.

And there's a lot of stuff that goes into that. But an example would be if somebody has a line right here, it's usually repressed anger, it usually means, or a critical parent hunch, or if they have it tucked by, it means that they got abused a lot as a kid. So there's physical cues, there's language cues, there's emotional cues, and then there's just pattern recognition.

Codie Sanchez (2:09)

That's horrifying, by the way.

Joe Hudson (2:12)

It scares people. When they watch me coach, it scares people that they feel like it's magic or something.

Codie Sanchez (2:18)

Interesting. You have a quote that I really liked, which is, shame is the lock that holds the chains of bad habits in place. Whatever you shame, you repeat.

Joe Hudson (2:26)

Yes.

Codie Sanchez (2:27)

What do you mean?

Joe Hudson (2:29)

The easiest way to think about this is to say, OK, think about all the things that you haven't wanted to do for like a decade, but you keep doing, and I can tell you something about them. All of them are things you tell yourself you should do or should not do. That's all shame. And it's very easy to see that it doesn't work because everything that you haven't changed in the last decade that you want to change, you've been shaming yourself for.

So what on earth would make us continue to do it? We'll be like, oh, but if I don't beat myself up, then nothing's going to change. But that's not true at all. If you look at a kid from, say, zero to seven or eight years old, there's a huge amount of change that happens, and there is no internal shame voice.

We grow and evolve by our nature. We don't do it because we're beating ourselves up. And it becomes really clear. Imagine if you had a boss, and the boss was over your head, and it was like, you shouldn't have done it that way. Why'd you do it that way? Oh, you could have done that better. The way that most people speak to themselves, you would be like, I fucking quit. I'm not here. I'm what? I'm out. But somehow, we think we need to do it to ourselves, but it's really, really ineffective.

Codie Sanchez (3:41)

So what is the way, then, to change something that you don't like about yourself?

Joe Hudson (3:45)

Focus on your wants and enjoyment. Let's say I want to work out.

As soon as that want becomes a should, then it's something I have to do. It's something I'm oppressed by. It's something that, oh, crap, I didn't do it. See, I'm bad. But if every time I think about working out, I'm like, what would be the coolest, funnest, most enjoyable way of working out? How do I enjoy working out 10% more this week?