Joe Hudson

No startup has ever failed from lack of effort

Joe Hudson pushes back on grind culture: Silicon Valley founders all work relentlessly, yet most startups still fail. Hours aren't the differentiator; what matters most is the quality of the relationships you hold and the decisions you make.

“Here's something that I've never seen. I've never seen a venture company or a startup fail because of lack of effort. Everybody is like, anybody who's got a startup in Silicon Valley anyways, they are efforting all the time, and yet a tremendous amount of them fail. But the idea is if I work harder, I'll succeed. But obviously that's not true. So then the question is like, what is the most important thing that you're doing? And it's usually the relationships you hold and the decisions that you make.”

Steal thisAudit your week for the quality of your key relationships and decisions, not the hours you logged.

Lasting change happens at three levels: mind, heart, nervous system

Hudson says any real transformation has to be addressed intellectually (the thinking prefrontal cortex), emotionally (the mammalian 'heart'), and somatically (the reptilian nervous system). Most high achievers only work the first level, which is why knowing what to do so rarely changes what they do.

“Yeah, so if you're gonna make any transformation effectively in your system, you have basically 3 levels that you need to address it at. The first level is the level of the mind. And this is what we're usually pretty good at, meaning, Most people know that they should work out, but it doesn't mean that they work out. Most people know they shouldn't be dicks to the people who they need to run their business, but not everybody is.”

Steal thisWhen a change won't stick, ask which level you skipped: the idea, the emotion you're avoiding, or your body's alarm response.

The self-reliance pattern: why so many founders can't ask for help

Hudson describes a pattern common in entrepreneurs, formed in childhood when no one could be relied on (a critical parent, an alcoholic father, a depressed mother). As adults they struggle to ask for help, say what they want, step into authority, or admit they're hurt.

“So the self-reliance pattern is basically a pattern that somewhere when you were young, you were taught that you had to fend for yourself. And 90% of the time, it meant you had to fend for other people. You had to take care of other people. Maybe that's because your parents were super critical, or maybe it's because you had an alcoholic father and you needed to take care of that father, or you had a depressed mother. But somewhere you learned, hey, no one's going to be there to take care of me. I got to take care of myself. My needs aren't going to be met otherwise. And then the outcome of that is that those people have a hard time asking for help.”

Steal thisIf you'd rather grind alone than ask for help, treat that as a pattern to examine rather than a strength.

The Golden Algorithm: the emotion you avoid is the one you create

Hudson's core model holds that the emotion you try to avoid gets invited in by the very actions you take to avoid it. A founder who refuses to feel helpless grinds, burns out, makes worse decisions, and damages relationships, and ends up more helpless. Shaan paraphrases it as 'what you avoid, you shall experience.'

“But the way that this works is what I will call the golden algorithm, what we call the golden algorithm. So the emotion that you're trying to avoid is the emotion you're inviting in the exact way that you're trying to avoid it. So you don't wanna feel helpless in the grocery store, so you don't ask for help, which means you walk away without the thing in the grocery store, or you don't wanna feel helpless about your business not doing well. So you grind, which keeps you more burnt out, making less good decisions, destroys your relationships. So you feel more helpless.”

Steal thisName the feeling you work hardest to avoid, then check whether your avoidance strategy is producing more of it.

Married 27 years, they rehearse their own divorce to stop fearing it

When Hudson's marriage reaches a point where it isn't working, he and his wife first grieve the relationship and fully visualize the divorce. Having already 'lived' the loss, they can show up as themselves, without accommodating or walking on eggshells, and work out how both can be happy as they are now.

“So we've been married 27 years. I've been married to at least 3 women in that 27 years. She's like, she's changed dramatically. I've changed dramatically. And so we come to points in our relationship where it's not working for us. And what our path is, is that we both grieve the relationship. It's over. We're getting a divorce. We visualize the divorce. It's horrible. We, like, have the entire experience. Because once we've had it, we don't have to be scared of it anymore.”

Steal thisBefore a high-stakes conversation, fully feel the worst outcome first so fear stops steering what you say.

Remove the brain's emotional center and you can't even pick a pen color

Hudson cites the neuroscience book Descartes' Error (Antonio Damasio's 1994 book; Hudson misremembers it as ~2012): people who lose the brain's emotional center keep the same IQ but can't make even trivial decisions. His point is that we fear emotional experiences rather than actual events, and every decision runs through emotion.

“So what's actually occurring is that we're scared of an emotional experience, not an actual experience. And neurologically, this is proven. So if I was to take the emotional center out of your brain, you would have an IQ that is the same as it is now, but you would have an incredibly hard time making decisions and your total life would fall apart. So, and you can read a book about this. It's called Descartes' Error.”

Retrain your nervous system with 2-second check-ins, not control

For the nervous-system level of change, Hudson says repetition matters. Build more pleasure into life to reset your baseline, and whenever you feel activated (say, a 'can we talk?' message), pause for a second or two to notice what it's like to be you rather than trying to control the anxiety, which only produces more of it.

“But the second thing is to really start to notice and be present with, for like 1 or 2 seconds, those moments when my nervous system is activated or when your nervous system is activated. So when that phone call comes in and you're like, oh shit, you just stop and you're like, what is it like to be me? 2 seconds, and then you go ahead and do your thing. Like, go ahead, be anxious again. Like, don't try to control yourself because trying to control your anxiety is just anxiety-producing, right?”

Steal thisWhen you feel a jolt of anxiety, pause two seconds to notice it, then carry on without trying to suppress it.

Avoiding conflict is ignoring someone pointing at the broken machine

Hudson frames conflict as the place where efficiency can be gained, in a marriage, a business, or between partners. Avoiding it is like a factory worker thanking someone for pointing out exactly where the machine is broken and then ignoring it. Shaan sums it up: 'you're avoiding progress, not conflict.'

“Yeah. So I think intellectually, the important thing to recognize about conflict, it is imagine you're working in a factory and somebody can tell you where the machine is going to break down, or someone can point to you, this is where the machine's broken. This is where the machine's broken. And you're like, great, thanks, and you ignore it. That's what avoiding conflict is like, because conflict is the place where efficiency can be gained, whether it's in a marriage or in a business or between business partners.”

Judge a company's health by two metrics: time to hard talk, time to resolve

When Hudson assesses an organization, he looks at just two things: how quickly people have the hard conversation, and how quickly they resolve it. A yelling CEO and a conflict-avoidant CEO both fail the test, whatever the surface behavior looks like.

“if I go in and monitor a company's health, I literally just use 2 metrics. How quickly do they have the hard conversation, and how quickly do they resolve it? So let's say you have a CEO who's a yeller. I guarantee you that a lot of hard conversations aren't gonna be had, and they're not resolving quickly. And let's say you have a CEO who's conflict avoidant. A lot of hard conversations aren't gonna be had, and a lot of things are gonna be avoided.”

Steal thisTrack how long your team takes to raise a hard conversation and to close it, and work to shrink both.

In a hard conversation, make them solve the problem for you

Instead of prescribing the fix ('make more calls, we'll monitor the data'), Hudson advises naming the problem and asking the person to bring you a plan. It empowers them, keeps them from blaming you, and breaks the self-reliant CEO habit of solving everyone else's problems.

“To most people in a hard conversation, say, hey, sales is off, and what I need you to do is make more phone calls, and we're gonna monitor those through this set of data, right? That's incredibly disempowering, and that conversation usually doesn't go very well. But if you say instead, hey, sales are off, I need a plan, please present it to me tomorrow. About how we're going to get sales back on track. That's a far more powerful way to do it because you're not, you're not disempowering the person and you're not coming in and telling them what to do.”

Steal thisNext time a number slips, say 'this is off, bring me a plan tomorrow' instead of dictating the fix.

In a hard conversation, make them solve the problem for you

Instead of prescribing the fix ('make more calls, we'll monitor the data'), Hudson advises naming the problem and asking the person to bring you a plan. It empowers them, keeps them from blaming you, and breaks the self-reliant CEO habit of solving everyone else's problems.

“To most people in a hard conversation, say, hey, sales is off, and what I need you to do is make more phone calls, and we're gonna monitor those through this set of data, right? That's incredibly disempowering, and that conversation usually doesn't go very well. But if you say instead, hey, sales are off, I need a plan, please present it to me tomorrow. About how we're going to get sales back on track. That's a far more powerful way to do it because you're not, you're not disempowering the person and you're not coming in and telling them what to do.”

Steal thisNext time a number slips, say 'this is off, bring me a plan tomorrow' instead of dictating the fix.

Don't change your negative self-talk; change how you react to it

Hudson says trying to change self-talk is inefficient, while changing your reaction to it works far better. Most people nod along to their inner critic like a fan at a rally. Instead, experiment with a new response ('Prove it,' 'That's shitty management') and swap in a new one every two days.

“If you try to change the self-talk, it's very inefficient. If you change the way you react to the self-talk, it's Far, far more efficient. Your self-talk is like, wow, you just really screwed up that podcast, Joe. And like most people, they listen to that the way that they would listen to a— think about the politician you hate most talking on stage, and then think about the person in the audience who's like, yep, uh-huh, yeah, yeah, that's right, uh-huh, yeah. That's how we listen to our self-talk.”

Steal thisPick one new way to answer your inner critic, use it every time for two days, then try a different one.

Experiment: enjoy what you're already doing 10% more, 5 times a day

One of the weekly experiments from Hudson's forthcoming book of 52: without changing what you're doing, pause five times a day for a week and ask how you could enjoy it 5-10% more. Sam calls it almost stupidly basic, then admits it's genuinely helpful.

“A really cool, super cool experiment is, So right now, enjoy yourself. Don't change what you're doing at all, but just enjoy what you're doing 10% more, right? Totally possible, totally capable, nothing to it. So just do that 5 times a day for the next week. 5 times a day, go, oh, how do I enjoy myself without changing anything? Just 5% more, 10% more.”

Steal thisSet five reminders a day this week that ask: how can I enjoy this 10% more without changing anything?

Break the self-reliance pattern: thank 5 people a day

Hudson's experiment for self-reliant entrepreneurs: consciously look for what others did for you and thank five people every day. He says it will totally change the habit of believing you have to do everything yourself.

“Yeah, one more experiment that I think is really cool for entrepreneurs, especially if they have, 'cause we've been talking about self-reliance, thank 5 people a day. Consciously look around and go, what did somebody do for me that I'm grateful for? And thank 5 people a day. It'll totally change your self-reliance pattern.”

Steal thisEach day, find five things people did for you and thank each of them directly.

An efficient life is like an efficient car: low energy, not top speed

Hudson separates fast from efficient: an efficient car gets from A to B without using much energy. For people, the best end-of-day efficiency measure is how much you enjoyed yourself, because enjoyment leaves energy for tomorrow. His company even screens job seekers by asking their passion and only talking if it matches an open slot.

“But if we had a car, A to B quickly isn't an efficient car. That's just a fast car. An efficient car is a car that gets to A to B without a lot of energy. And so if you want efficiency in your life, it's how much energy you spent in that day. And often that doesn't end up making you go faster. And so, if I get to the end of the day and I say, how much did I enjoy myself? That's the best measure of efficiency, because I have energy for the next day and I want to come back.”

Steal thisEnd each day by rating how much you enjoyed it, and treat low scores as an efficiency problem.

Your 'billion-dollar idea' is the one you wouldn't sell for $1B

Hudson and his wife both said they wouldn't sell their business for $1 billion if it meant never doing the work again. His daughter later turned that into a test: her 'billion-dollar idea' wasn't something that could grow to $1B but something she wouldn't sell for $1B. Hudson says that's how to tell whether work is deeply meaningful to you.

“And I said, I'm just curious, would you sell this business for $1 billion if we could not do it again? Like, we would be done doing it, but we'd get $1 billion. And both of us went like this. We both went, we wouldn't. Like, that was our answer. I don't know, I told my— I came home, told the story to my daughters. And then like 2 or 3 months later, one of my daughters comes in and says, I found my billion-dollar idea. I'm like, cool, something you can grow into a billion dollars? And she's like, no, something I wouldn't sell for a billion dollars.”

Steal thisAsk of your current work: would I sell it for $1B if I could never do it again? If the answer is yes, keep looking.

Most elite CEOs feel better and worse than everyone at the same time

From coaching top performers, Hudson observes that leaders of fast-paced companies rarely second-guess themselves because they make so many decisions (investors can afford to). He estimates 60-70% believe they're more capable than everyone while feeling broken underneath, and are driven to prove they're not.

“The other thing that I think those very high performers, it's not all of them, but I would say, like, at least 60, maybe 70%, they both feel like they're better than everybody and worse than everybody simultaneously. So they, on one level, in their conscious mind, they're like, I am more capable than people, than the average person, but underneath they're like, I'm broken. And so they're kind of doing this thing because they know that they're better and they're trying to prove that they're not broken.”

An 8-second glimpse of oneness hooked him 'like heroin' for 7 years

Hudson's wife made therapy, a 10-day silent retreat, and six months of developing-world travel conditions of marriage. On day 3 of the Vipassana retreat he had an 8-second experience of oneness that changed his life; he then didn't work for seven years, lived off credit cards, and meditated about seven hours a day.

“And on day 3 of Vipassana, they have, you know, so when it changes from putting all your attention into your breath to like moving your attention through your body, And I had this experience of like evaporation. Samadhi is what some people would call it, but this experience of, I am one with everything and everything is good. And it lasted 8 seconds. And it was like getting hooked on heroin. My entire life changed. I was like, whatever the fuck that is, I'm obsessed.”

An 8-second glimpse of oneness hooked him 'like heroin' for 7 years

Hudson's wife made therapy, a 10-day silent retreat, and six months of developing-world travel conditions of marriage. On day 3 of the Vipassana retreat he had an 8-second experience of oneness that changed his life; he then didn't work for seven years, lived off credit cards, and meditated about seven hours a day.

“And on day 3 of Vipassana, they have, you know, so when it changes from putting all your attention into your breath to like moving your attention through your body, And I had this experience of like evaporation. Samadhi is what some people would call it, but this experience of, I am one with everything and everything is good. And it lasted 8 seconds. And it was like getting hooked on heroin. My entire life changed. I was like, whatever the fuck that is, I'm obsessed.”

He was a bad VC because he 'needed to be needed', so he coached CEOs

After advising a wealthy family he was doing an art installation for to buy oil and gold, Hudson was invited to run clean-tech venture investing for their family office around 2006. He says he was a poor investor because great investors back founders who don't need them, so he coached portfolio CEOs instead, which became his career and later Art of Accomplishment.

“And it turned out I was not a great investor because I needed to be needed too much. Like, a great investor is the investor who's like, they do— I am investing because you don't need me at all. And I was like, I need to be needed, which was horrible as venture investor. And in that, so the only way for me to be successful was to coach the CEOs into like turning their companies around. And we had a positive result on the portfolio, so we invested more.”

Frame everything as an experiment so your brain can't log a failure

Hudson explains the habenula, a brain region that stops animals repeating a losing move but also makes people skip the second sales call after a rejection or quit a diet over one slice of cake. Framing efforts as experiments means you're always learning, never failing; he cites a weight-loss study where constant iterators were the ones who succeeded.

“Unfortunately, what this does for us is it means, like, we're not gonna make the second sales call 'cause we just got rejected. Or when we stop we eat that piece of chocolate cake that we talked about earlier, I'm gonna just quit my diet. That's what it does in our brain. So, if you frame it as an experiment, then what you're doing is you're constantly learning and you're never failing.”

Steal thisLabel your next uncertain project an 'experiment' with a learning goal, so a bad result counts as data rather than failure.

AI researchers' doom odds reflect how they were raised, not reality

Asked about an Anthropic researcher's claim of a 10%+ chance AI kills humanity, Hudson describes watching AI researchers line up on a spectrum across 20 questions (does AGI exist, will it destroy the world) and spread out on every one. His takeaway: their forecasts say more about their upbringing than about reality.

“And then they were asked to line up on this line and they lined up very, very differently. Like they were spread out. Okay, is it going to destroy the world? Is it going to be the best thing for humanity? they're all spread out on the line. Every single question, there's not everybody on one corner and everybody on the other corner. And so my takeaway from that is their thinking about what's going to happen with AI has far more to do with how they were raised than it has to do with any kind of reality.”