Savage Mindset: In It For The Long Game

Welcome to my newsletter. Every month, I’m going to be sharing highlights of leadership lessons, new tech, and things that have inspired me recently.

This month, I’m sharing thoughts on longevity mindset and how adopting one can set you up for long-term success.

A First Principle to Last

Your job as a leader is to make decisions every day.?

Sometimes the decisions you make will be immediately clear to you. Other times, they will not. Oftentimes, you’ll be bombarded with advice. In these instances, it’s up to you to sort through that external information and decide what you want to do.

At Wistia , my Co-Founder and CTO Brendan Schwartz and I have had to make business-changing decisions over the past 17 years.?

One of the hardest? Deciding if we wanted to sell our business or keep it.

Taking the money was a nearly irresistible temptation. Almost everyone told us to take the money and run. Only one did not.

We considered our options.

Taking a short-term approach would point to selling. This would mean that we wouldn’t have to deal with or manage a bunch of the problems we had. This would feel like a quick win.

But, when we thought about that option in the long term, we thought we would get bored or feel like we had failed. We had so many other things we wanted to do.

If we thought only about the short term, we should sell. But in the long term, we believed the work and process would make us happier.?

Making that decision was a crystalizing moment for us. The journey, the products, the team, and working on those things over the long term are what was and remains fulfilling.

We had not realized until that decision just how much longevity had helped us get to where we were, on the precipice of acquisition. In that moment, we also realized that longevity wasn’t just something we desired. It was a principle that guided the way each of us made hard decisions.

Reduce Future Regret

Another perk of principled longevity? It can protect you from a future of regret.

When I’m making a decision, I put my future self in the driver’s seat and wonder how he’ll feel about the decision I’m about to make. Applying future perspective can be applied to something as simple as making the decision to go on vacation:

• “How will I feel about taking this vacation a week after I’m back?”
• “How about 5 years from now?”
• “How about when I’m 80?”

When I’m 80, it’s a sure bet my only regret would be skipping that vacation and missing out on precious time with my friends and family.

Using longevity makes decision-making more simple. It also protects me from regret down the road.?

Stay Energized for the Long Haul

A longevity mindset makes it easier to scale because you are more willing to sustain investments, delegation, and scaling that doesn't go well the first time in service of having something you want to work on for the long term.

Once you’ve committed to adopting a longevity mindset, your daily habits are as important as making decisions that fulfill your vision.

“Buy Back Your Time" by Dan Martell is an excellent guide for entrepreneurs who need help managing their time and establishing practices that will help them stay in the game for years.

Dan breaks down all the ways that people get stuck and compromise their efforts to scale and delegate. His message is simple. As you grow, you need to buy back your time so you can work on those things that:

A. You uniquely can do

B: Give you energy

Dan is right. There’s no way to work on hard problems for a long time if you aren't getting energy from the work. Brendan and I have been at it for nearly two decades, and doing what each of us loves is the most important secret to our longevity.