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Why do we hesitate?

I had this moment saying “you've been through all this to get to this point, now you're gonna succumb when you're at the precipice?” So actually, I owe a debt of gratitude to the great poet Eminem because I decided that I was gonna put “Lose yourself” on a loop for two hours. And I have a video of me in the car, I didn't take it off the entire time until the cameras got rolling

Laura turns to me, and she said “Matt, in the history of shark tank no one has come on and walked on the set like they were there from the first day”

I'm not a natural, I want you to know I’m not a natural, and you don't need to be a natural, but you do need to overcome that voice in your head

The title – Burn the Boats – from the beginning of recorded history, anytime you have a military leader and they are outnumbered, ten to one, and they need to do the impossible, they always use the same concepts in different languages – this idea that to get the most out of you, you need to eliminate your escape route and also eliminate your food. It's in the art of war, it says “burn the boats and the cooking pots”. It goes back to the ancient Israelites, it goes back to Caesar crossing the Rubicon, it goes back to a very bad man Cortez, this notion that humans perform best when they have no plan B

That's easy to say but I have mouths to feed, or I have bills, easy for you to say, this and that. There's a framework of excuses and I always say to the people I most care about that if we go into a deeper conversation about it, if anyone has ever done it in your circumstance then your argument is over. If anyone with an alcoholic father has ever succeeded in happiness and business, then your argument is over

Let me take you back to that shoebox apartment in Queens, New York, when I’m literally eating government cheese, sleeping on a mattress, taking care of my mother. Let me take you to the moment that I had cancer, or that I got divorced, all these different moments that you could say “all right, I don't want that”, I can relate to that

Burn the boats. It's not ‘burn the boats with you on it’. The point of the book is that you should process risk by all means, you need to process risk at the beginning of the journey and say what's the worst that could possibly happen. Once you've process risk and synthesized it, then you can go forth fearlessly

Actually, what I’m trying to demonstrate and there's a lot of academia in the book to prove the point that the mere contemplation of a plan B or your escape route dramatically reduces the probability that you'll be successful

The boat in my case is not really your escape route, it's the things that recur in your life internally and externally that make you revisit whether you should do something

I always call it and you've heard this a million times “listen, let's shoot for the moon, and if it doesn't go great, we're gonna end up at the top of the mountain, which is a hell of a lot better than being on the top of this house.” It it's the only way I can think

The boat generally is a metaphor for whatever is holding you back. And a big premise of the book, the first thing that you start with – what are you carrying around that you haven't dealt with that can make you lighter. And the first thing is to shed your shame. So, the image on the book looks like a paper boat floating in a bathtub and that represents all the things from childhood that tend to hold it

There's no new ideas in the universe so all I’m trying to do is hold up a mirror and validate that

I get a phone call one night from my partner and he's crying through the phone, basically saying “hey Matt, I failed you, I am so sorry, I’m out, I’m gonna resign.” I said, “first of all, what's that noise in the background I hear beeping” and he's like “I’m in the hospital, my daughter is getting tested for seizures, everything's falling apart”. And I said “Aiden, I’m perfectly comfortable calling you when it's over, it's not over, it's just beginning, you're at the moment of capitulation, you need to hang up the phone, you need to take care of your child right now, and you call me when you're ready to do the work.” A few days later he called me. You could hear it in his voice, he had contemplated the worst-case scenario, total failure, company didn't work, and had let it go, and then the real work began

If you're hesitating, it makes sense that you can't figure it out yourself, lean on something or someone. Self-awareness is the greatest single arbitrage professionally and personally, it's entirely within your control

He made a single decision he was no longer going to work on concealing, he was going to do a 180 and create a culture of total transparency. In probably about 19 months, he turned the whole business around and had a massive nine-figure exit to what could have been a zero. So to me that story illustrates the power of self-awareness if you just choose to look within

I think that leaning into the things that make you unique are actually places of confidence to not hedge

Structural integrity – you are constructed with perfect integrity because you are authentic and there's nothing in conflict inside of yourself. You have no shame, because you have nothing to hide, and as a result you're able to move effortlessly

If I refuse to let things die, I pay an even double tax. Now I forecast future behavior, at least try to do better and say: 1 – “what am I going to care about in three years“ and 2 – “am I gonna die trying to save it”

I tend not to be wrong because I’m petrified of it

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