Day 35 Transcript

Week 5’s over. The whole shebang is over. Lazy Sunday. Time to reflect.

I think a lot about a Harvey Dent line in Chris Nolan’s "The Dark Knight. The line: "You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain."

The hustle version is: the more you succeed, the more you risk becoming what you swore to destroy.

It's not that people change. They don’t.

Scale is the villain.

If your goal is #$%#-you money, you’re going to grow past a certain number of employees– the popular number is 150 employees– after that milestone, your company won’t be yours anymore. I mean culturally.

Scale brings professionalism. Another way of saying that? It leaves the amateurs behind.

That sounds great for the company but I’d remind you of the definition of amateur.

An amateur is defined by their love for an activity. They engage in that activity primarily for meaning, or personal satisfaction. Yes, there’s some financial reward, some external validation but that’s not the main reason amateurs do what they do.

The word itself comes from the Latin "amator," meaning "lover of"-an amateur does something because they love it. For amateurs, their obsession is often a way of living, pursued freely and passionately, without the bullshit that comes with professional obligations.

A professional, by contrast, is someone who is paid for being the adult in the room. They’re defined by their commitment, consistency… their process-oriented mindset. And while professionals may also love what they do, they think of your love– your baby– as "work" - something tied to livelihood, schedules, performance reviews.

We tell ourselves that scale means your baby is growing. But they’re growing into some joyless, soulless professional.

And I think that might be too high a cost for fuck you money.

That’s the perfect message to close on.

I hope you learned something.