-CGA_ki1pns
My Builder’s Console Log
Transcript
[00:00] Welcome to episode four of builder's console log. This one is titled go with your gut. When I say go with your gut, this means go with your instinct or decisions. And typically this is going to lead to better decisions long term. So in builder console fashion, I'll give you some personal stories. A story that I heard recently while traveling when it came to going with your gut. So the story I'll first tell is a story that I heard from someone else. And this story was essentially I was staying at a hostel nearby and I was wearing my cow shirt. I have like that Berkeley shirt
[00:30] that you probably see on my thumbnails now. Not thumbnails, my profile pick. And I was just doing some work in the social area. Someone just cold approached me in hostels. People are friendly. So you say hello and you know learn about each other and he's like did you go to Cow? I'm like yeah I went to Cal. And he's like you know I wish I went to Cal. And his story was that his parents essentially didn't want him to leave home or leave like the region of home. And at that point, especially when you're applying for colleges and getting into colleges, you're still probably like, you know, 17, 18, 19. So, he's still trying to feel out the world. And
[01:01] long story short of his situation was he didn't go. His gut told him to go, but he didn't go. He stayed where he was from. He went to school there. He has a successful career now where he's making good money, but he does deeply regret not going to Cal and experiencing Berkeley. And from that regret, I could tell that he really wished he went with his gut and his instinct to go to Cal. Now, he's in a situation where he's going to look for a master's program within Berkeley and still try to go. But the overarching theme here for this
[01:33] lesson is go with your gut in especially major life decision moments. And the reason I say this is that let's say you're right and you went with your gut. It was a good decision. It's going to reinforce a muscle in your body that tells you that you have good ability to discern opportunity and choose the correct path. Now, let's say you're wrong and you chose the wrong decision. This is still good as well. And the reason this is good is because now the only person you can really blame is yourself rather than an external party.
[02:03] For his context, he can put the blame onto his parents like, "Well, I would have done it anyways, but my parents convinced me to do otherwise." But if you made that distinction where instead he went to cow and maybe it was a mistake like his parents said then at least he can own up to his own mistake and learn from it rather than pushing off that blame to an external party. Another example of this for me personally is growing up I've always built companies always entrepreneurial journey everything of this nature but at one point in my career I had worked a job for 10 months for a high-end fashion
[02:34] brand. I was part of their dev team working on their website everything like this. There was a point in this career where instinctually in my gut I knew this wasn't right. I needed to pivot. I was told from third-party sources, external sources, this wasn't a smart decision to go down and create my own business, create my own software, start this content. This was not a good idea. But then that put me in that position again where it's either you go with your gut or you listen to a third party. Now a third party can give you insight. Of course, they can give you experience.
[03:05] They give you ideas. They can tell you what not to do. But when it comes to making that final decision, go with your gut. You're not always going to be right. But the point is, at least you can fall back on the fact that it was your decision. It wasn't theirs. It wasn't anyone else's. It was your decision to do XYZ. For example, another one, me traveling and kind of doing what I'm doing now where I'm jumping between different buildings, different countries, everything like this. I will say this has been it's been fun but stressful at the same time because I am
[03:37] having to record in a bunch of different environments and learn a new skill of actively traveling with two backpacks and with all this equipment. I mean, as you can tell, you're probably like, Corbin, where the heck are you? I'm in an attic right now. I'm in an attic in a bungalow. But the idea is I went with my gut and I know long-term I'm going to thank myself for this rather than I could have went to an alternative route. My outside pressure was telling me to stay where I was and be more productive in the current area I was before I
[04:07] started traveling. The best part about going with your gut in a lot of these decisions as well is that it starts building up a roster of previous gut decisions that turned out to be very advantageous. And when you start building this roster of like, "Hey, I made this decision. Whoa, that worked out really well." The next decision you make, you're going to have more context of probably the right thing to do. Now, if you made every single decision, or take a step back, if you didn't make every single decision, you didn't go off your gut feeling, and every single decision you made up to this point has
[04:37] been from an external source, that causes you to have less footing when coming to more important decisions you have to make later on in life, like moving to a new area. Why are you moving to that new area? Well, I was just told to go here. You don't necessarily have a strong footing based off past experiences of your own decisions of what to do next and how to do it effectively. I think another thing that going with your gut does, even when you're wrong or you're right or whatever it pans out to be, is it does build confidence and it does build character and it builds your identity as you do
[05:07] things that are true to you. what your gut is telling you and what your instinct is telling you is very much aligned with who you want to be and how you want to operate in this world. Anything that goes against your gut feeling of, you know what, this feels right. I want to do this is typically you saying no to who you truly want to embody in this life. And I think a big thing about going with your gut is it gives you confidence to make those bolder decisions. No one can just wake up and decide, you know what, I'm going
[05:38] to build the next billion dollar software without those little wins. The little wins of like, I set up my first app. Okay, that's cool. the little win of I got my first paying customer. Little wins build into the bigger wins later on. And if you build those little wins on instinct, stuff that you are deciding from your brain into operation, that's going to be a huge advantage compared to people that don't necessarily always go with their gut and are more taken down a path that are essentially just influenced to go down
[06:08] the path. I mean, a big thing in life with a lot of people is they find themselves in paths that they're not really happy about or are like, "How did I even get here?" And a lot of the times, you know, the biggest influence in life is either going to be the government, school, parents, family, friends. All this stuff plays a role in how you operate and decide to do whatever is next in your life. And the biggest thing that you should really harp in on is start trusting yourself when it comes to bigger decisions. This ability for instinct and knowing what's
[06:39] right next is a very useful skill in business as well as when you're running a business as a small team or as a CEO or as a co-founder and you have to directionally tell where the company's going to go, where it's going to allocate its resources for the next 6 months, you're going to make decisions that will quite literally give the trajectory of whether your company will be very successful or not at all. And that comes with experience and that comes with just doing. But the big overarching thing here is that there is no company I mean once you get really big obviously there's so many moving
[07:10] parts but small companies it very much comes down to one decision maker maybe two decision makers for where we're pushing this lever towards and if you push the lever towards the correct things you'll get the correct amount of return on investment but if you push the lever towards the wrong things then obviously you're going to find yourself hitting your head against a wall but going back to that story of that friend I met at the hostel where I could see the deep amount of regret of not going with their gut when it came to going to Cal at least. Don't hold on to that kind of stuff. Don't live in the past. Living
[07:41] in the past is one of the worst things you can do for moving forward. It's quite literally in the name. Don't live in the past. Yeah, you messed up. Maybe you made the wrong choice. Maybe you didn't go with your gut that time. But the next time, the next time you go with your gut. You own up to it. And even if you're wrong, you went with your gut. You can say that with absolute confidence. So that's the theme of this builder console log. I think the big thing for me, especially me traveling now and making that decision in my life, that was a completely completely gut move. Wasn't really influenced by much.
[08:11] If anything, I was getting the exact opposite influence to not do what I'm doing right now. It's a learning experience. You're not going to be doing everything perfectly the first time. When I first got out here, my backpack was just way too small. It exploded. So, I had to get like a way bigger backpack. There's a bunch of little stuff here and there you learn along the way, but through action, you'll learn how to react to future situations, future stuff. Biggest thing is don't live in the past. Go with your gut. Own up to it. Own up to your actions, and you'll live a better life. as anything that
[08:41] I've done up to this point, any choice I've made up to this point, as long as you own up to it and you have the intuition to realize, you know what, that was a gut decision made based off of my past experiences, past actions, then the next decision you'll make, you'll know what to do in a better way. But no one's perfect. No one's perfect. Like those I keep bringing up these crispy cream donuts, but man, I think I'm craving crispy cream donuts. Just like those 12 glazed ones, you know, like doesn't have to be anything fancy. No chocolate. I mean, chocolate's good. Like maple bars are good, but just like some crispy cream donuts, which sounds really good. That concludes this episode of Builder's Console log. Go with your
[09:11] gut, go with your instinct, be your own influence.