RS178: Cognitive Biases That Affect Our Decisions

June 18, 2019 00:35:32
RS178: Cognitive Biases That Affect Our Decisions
Rogue Startups
RS178: Cognitive Biases That Affect Our Decisions

Jun 18 2019 | 00:35:32

/

Show Notes

On this episode of Rogue Startups, we discuss cognitive biases and how they affect your decision-making process. Tune in to hear us discuss various types of biases that affect the way we do business every day.

Topics:

View Full Transcript

Episode Transcript

Speaker 0 00:00 <inaudible> welcome to the rogue startups podcast where to startup founders are sharing lessons learned and pitfalls to avoid in their online businesses. And now here's Dave and Craig. All right, welcome to episode one 78 of rogue Speaker 1 00:23 startups. Mr. Craig, how are you doing? Speaker 2 00:26 I'm doing great, man. I'm doing great. We, uh, we've had a busy, a very busy last like two weeks I guess since you and I talked last. Um, but it is all going great, man. It's all a lot of activity and stuff with Casto send everything inside. Tiny seed is very bustling, but uh, it's all good stuff. Yeah, Speaker 1 00:44 I can imagine that the tiny seed stuff has made you unbelievably busy now because you've got all of these resources at your disposal and you just got to scramble to make shit happen because now you're on the clock. Right? Okay. Speaker 2 00:57 Yeah, for sure. For sure. I mean, I said, I think it put a thing in like Twitter that it's like a lot of positive pressure, a lot of like positive peer pressure because we have, you know, nine or 10 other companies in there that, that we're all, we're not competing because we're not at similar places in our business and we're definitely not in similar industries or anything, but we're a team and we're a group, so we're, we're all kind of, you know, trying to compete with ourselves I guess. Um, but yeah, it's great. I mean, what I think the biggest thing for me is focus. It is just laser focused. Everything that I do, um, you know, focus mostly on cast, which is great. And then focusing on growth and product and stuff like that and a, in a really productive way. So it's been really cool so far. Speaker 1 01:42 Nice. Nice. How about you? Well, I don't have a ton of news this week with recapture in the plugins. We're kind of in a a down period, uh, waiting for emails to go out and we're still doing onboarding of new folks and fighting some account issues and things like that. But it's mostly just, you know, support related stuff and me answering random weird account questions at this point. And as far as recapture goes, the window for Cart Hook is closing out here in about a month and we're still onboarding people and we're still seeing some growth. So just a humming along with that for now. We're trying to get another integration in the pipeline right now, but that has kind of stalled out because they did some major rewrites on an API on the vendor's side. And so we're trying to get them to tell us when they're ready for that. Speaker 1 02:37 But yeah. And as of this week, uh, we just bought a, for our personal update, we just bought a travel trailer, actually it's a pop up tent trailer, so we're going to kind of join the nomad, the nomadic lifestyle. We're not like leaving the house and going across the country or anything like that. But you know you live in Colorado, this is a pretty thing to do is grab your RV trailer or whatever and go up camping for the weekend. So now with the three kids, the whole tent camping thing is it's just enough of a pain in the ass that you are less motivated to do it. So we decided we were going to buy this from some friends of ours that had upgraded to a bigger trailer and they are all like, it's kind of like there are Cologne family, so their, their father is very tall like I am. Speaker 1 03:26 The mother is also a pretty tall as well. And so they bought a decent size rig that's big enough for tall people like that. So you can stand inside with that stupid over and feeling all cramped and they have three girls and we have three girls. So we now kind of got a perfect match on that. And I've been scrambling all this week and all my spare time to deal with just all the logistics that go with that trailer hitch stuff. Brake controllers. My wife's looking at lake remodeling, the inside of the trailer painting. Oh my God, a new linoleum curtains cushion covers all this stuff. I'm like, okay then. All right. I guess we've got our summer booked up now. Speaker 2 04:12 It sounds like a maybe one step down from buying a boat in the, uh, what, what does it say about a boat? It's a giant hole in the ocean you throw money at, it sounds like you might have just bought yourself a big hole in the ground to throw money at. Speaker 1 04:25 The good news is this is a 12 year old pop up trailer, so we got a good deal on it. I looked at other ones that were out there and this was lower price than all of the other ones that I saw you. So I didn't feel like we got jacked on this. And there's a lot of stuff that they're throwing in that's extra, but you're right. I mean the two happiest moments in a boat owner's life, the day that you buy it and the day that you sell it, right? Yeah. And that's probably true of trailers as well. But you know, I mean, I grew up with my family. We started had a travel trailer when I was like seven or eight and then eventually we graduated to a motor home when I was like 13, I think. And we had that and that was our travel vacation mobility platform for years and years. Speaker 1 05:11 Every vacation we had would involve that vehicle somehow in one way or another. Yeah. So I have lots of positive memories of that. I very much enjoyed it. And my wife has been saying for a long time, hey, you know, we really had to do this, we ought to get a trailer. And I was Kinda like, are you sure you're going to want to be in a trailer? My wife doesn't like, uh, claustrophobic spaces. She's got issues with that. And so I was like, all right, well trailers kinda confined. And she's like, well, let's go. Let's just go check it out. And surprisingly, she was into this, so we got to see one, we've got to stand in one. And I'm like, okay, if you're into this, you're into this, this is a good price, this good deal. We can do this. So here we are, we're doing it. That's awesome. Or for worse. And Speaker 2 05:56 so this is the kind of, you tow behind the car or truck or van or whatever you have? Speaker 1 06:01 Yeah, yeah, we've got a large SUV and we've always had one that could tow something that just never has. And I just need to get like a few extra accessories to basically hook it up to this particular vehicle. But I add the hitch already there and just some electronics that need to be added in. So yeah. Awesome. Awesome. That's cool man. That's very cool. Yes. So where's your first trip going to be? We have a walk, we'll call it a test trip. So we were going to go up to our friends cabin up in grand lake, which is in the central mountains north of winter park, uh, on the south side of Rocky Mountain National Park here in Colorado. And we're going to take the trailer up there because their cabin is a little tight. And they were already saying, well, you know, we could throw sleeping bags on the floor or whatever. Speaker 1 06:49 And we're like, okay. Yeah, that's no problem because the kids are going to be doing that, not me. And I'm like, yeah, that's fine. That's perfectly fine. But now we'll take this up and maybe like three of the kids will want to sleep with a trailer, you know, great. Go for it. Have Fun, you know, then you've got a place to hang out. So it's just more like getting some practice without the commitment of okay, we've got everything. Did we forget everything you do? Did we forget something that was really important? Are We screwing something up? But now I can go up there, we can try it out. They actually have had a trailer for years, so they have some experience and if we run into a problem we can probably get some help from them. And you know, it's very lightweight. And then after that, the next trip we've got vacations scheduled that already wasn't planned for the trailer. And the the next time I think we're going to go as towards the end of July. But then after that we've got a couple in August, couple in September, and then by the time October rolls around, it will, uh, be starting to get a little cold. And then you don't want to take it out after that because a, you'll have to keep it winterized so you won't be able to use like the water in the toilet and stuff like that. Speaker 2 07:53 Right, right, right, right. Yeah. Interesting. That's cool. That's great. I, uh, I look forward to hearing the report after your first trip, after the maiden voyage, um, to, to see how it goes. That's really cool. Speaker 1 08:04 Yeah, yeah. Should be fine. I mean, the thing that my wife and I were talking about, nothing that really sort of pushed me over the edge on this one was, you know, our oldest is about to turn 15. So she's going to be a freshman in high school this fall. We basically have four more years while she's hanging around the house on a regular basis. So if we're gonna, if we're gonna do it, now's the time to do it because in two years, you know, towards the end of high school, she's going to be busy with various activities and, or wanting to do stuff with their friends and probably not wanting to hang out with their family as much. So we got to do it now. Like we're the, the clock is ticking, right. And the other two, they're old enough to really help and they're old enough to really get a lot out of these places and just go driving around and they have no problem hanging out in the car for a long period of time now. So like this is the perfect time we gotta we gotta make it happen basically. Speaker 2 08:57 Yeah, no, that's awesome man. That's awesome. My, uh, I guess my only other like personal update, uh, is next week we are going to Berlin for WordCamp Europe. So WordCamp Europe is the biggest word press conference. What Dave in the world to like, depending on the year, like 3000 people. Um, I learned the hard way and this is a huge oh shit moment. I had bought the tickets and we're having like our team retreat there and everything, like bought the flights and everything for everybody and then realized, Oh, and I'm a ticket yet. So I go to a WordCamp Europe, whatever.com sold out. Speaker 1 09:29 Oh, Speaker 2 09:33 how can a big ass conference like this be sold out? And evidently, I mean they've released tickets and waves and sure enough they had sold out like the day before. I ended up buying one off somebody else for the same price that they sell them for. And WordCamp tickets are like 50 bucks. So it's not that, but it's just that like they weren't tickets available. I was like, Oh my, Oh my God, if we organized this whole thing and I can't get a ticket, I'm going to be so upset. But um, it all worked out and I'm really excited. So there are two developers that live kind of in this part of the world are coming and we're going to spend about a day in Berlin before the conference starts. And then one of them is staying for the whole rest of the conference. One of them's going back home cause he doesn't work on our wordpress stuff, but it'll be great to get together with them. Speaker 2 10:18 Uh, we're going to be planning out a lot of, like the next couple of big features in the product. Um, it'd be able to, you know, whiteboard that and talk through it together. We're renting a coworking space, like office room for a day and just be able to, to kind of wrap on all this stuff. It'll be really cool. I'm looking forward to, I've not, I've not met people I work with hardly at all, uh, in like four years. So it'll be really cool to like meet Jonathan and Danilo and get a chance to, you know, work together and I'm sure it'll be positive, you know, all around and for a long time. So it really cool. Speaker 1 10:53 Awesome. Awesome. Yeah, that was lucky for you. Snag in that wordpress, a Europe ticket there. I'm, I'm a little surprised that the sold out as well, but that's awesome. Speaker 2 11:03 Yeah, yeah, for sure. So this week we're talking about a, an article on the 20 cognitive biases that screw up your decisions. Uh, and we are absolutely not going to run through all 20 of them, but thought that we would highlight a couple of them and kind of some examples maybe that we have, uh, seen or been faced with in our kind of lives and businesses. Um, and I think the important thing about this, Dave, is like as we're all being like trying to improve ourselves and how we work in our businesses and be more effective, I think a lot of these biases and realizing them and realizing our own limitations and getting help to avoid them or overcome them, uh, is super important. Because when I think once you get past a certain point, you got to really look at yourself in the mirror pretty strongly and say like, you know, this is a problem. I to address this or overcome it or get help or have someone join the team that can help us with this kind of stuff. And if you're, if you have the blinders on these cognitive biases, I think you're, you're going to stunt your growth in your businesses growth because you're not addressing these things like head on. Um, so that's why I really thought this was like a really good topic to talk about. Speaker 1 12:14 Yeah, and I would say that the number one thing that I think is the hardest for us to understand and realize is that we all have biases. Even those of us that say I'm not biased, I don't have any biases, I'm totally open and that's bullshit. It's absolute bullshit if you say that. If you say that you are not self aware enough to realize that there are biases that even affect you when you say that on top of it there, you know, just whether we're talking about politics or religion or we're talking about your upbringing or where you live, there are biases that affect you every second of every day of the week, the specific ones. So, and we're going to link this article to the show notes as well because I think it's useful to go through all 20 of these biases and see which ones affect you the most. Speaker 1 13:05 And some of them may not even apply to you at all. I'm looking at some of these biases going. Yeah, I don't really see that one. That's not, you know, that like one of them is the placebo effect, you know, are you, are you directly effected by the Placebo Effect? How would you know if you're affected by the placebo effect? Right. Um, you know, stuff like that. But I mean it's still a bias and it's good to be aware of these things, but there are definite biases in there that when I was talking with Craig about this, the, the two of us realize that a lot of these things are impacting our business decisions. The way we think about our companies, that things that you want to pursue as an idea or the execution strategies that you're want. Like every single one of these things has a bias that you have in there. Speaker 1 13:48 And it's so important to be aware of what those biases are and whether you're being impacted by them or not. Because only when you are aware of a bias, can you actually actively try to go against it and then say, oh, well, I don't want to, I don't want to be biased in that way. Maybe I need to look at these other things because that's an area that I'm uncomfortable with and that's where your, that's where your growth is going to happen, right? Yup. Yup. For sure. For sure. All right. Uh, do you want to launch the f? Speaker 2 14:17 Yeah, so I'll start off and I think Dave and I are probably going to kind of tackle this from opposite ends of this list and just cover a handful of these probably. But, uh, the first one for me, uh, is survivorship bias. And the place where this comes and bites us all in the, but I think is, is hearing the growth and success stories of our peers are people that are a little bit further along in like the business journey than we are. You know, so it's, Oh, I grew all of my business on Facebook ads. I grew all of my business on cold email. I grow all of my business on a, you know, content. And I think the, the problem with this is one, uh, the survivorship bias is that they were successful. So you don't talk to people that says <inaudible> I tried Facebook ads for four years and my business failed. Speaker 2 15:05 Uh, those people just don't talk about that. So that's like the balancing part of this, like information gathering and processing that you should be doing. And I think that only listening to people that say, oh, we have a s, you know, six, seven, eight figure business. And we grew at like, this is really like, um, a limited piece of information that you have and is really, really dangerous because you're not hearing the other part of it is all these businesses that failed trying the same things that we hear all of these businesses being successful doing. Um, so in that context, this one is something I'm, I try to be very conscious of, but, but probably don't do a good job of realizing like where I'm coming from or how I'm perceiving this information. Speaker 1 15:49 Yeah, yeah, that's definitely a problem. That's definitely a problem. So the first bias that I want to mention right here is confirmation bias. And for those that might not be familiar with this is one that I think it affects you politically, it affects you and your personal life. It's basically the IMF that you're only gonna listen to things that confirm any preconceptions that you have. So if you're talking to, you know, if you're a Democrat and you're talking to a Republican, each of you has a preconceived set of notions and you're unlikely to make them change their mind by presenting factual information because you have a confirmation bias. If the information that they give you reinforces what you already know, boom, you're totally on board with it. But if it contradicts it, you're going to be like, screw that. I don't believe that. I'm totally skeptical and I have seen this so many times personally, but in my own business life where if I think that up certain tactic is going to work, if there's a, an article that's out there that says, nope, this tactic is crap and here's why, then I will go with the articles that support my confirmation by us instead of me learning with it. Speaker 1 17:05 And that's, that's a problem, right? For the longest time I felt like linkedin was a really shitty channel. And so any article that would say linkedin is shit. I was like, Oh yeah, this is a great article. Let me tweet this out. And then you know, we had James on the show and it was like, well linkedin isn't shit if you do these things and have this situation. And so, I mean the part, if you relisten to that episode, you'll probably hear me being kind of quiet and that's cause I was heavy confirmation bias problems. But what was interesting about that is that because I realized at some point during that conversation, you know, I think you have a confirmation bias issue here. That's when I could sort of open up and, and basically stop resisting the other side of the information and absorb it for what it is and you know, look at it from a different perspective, which is not something I was able to do before. Speaker 1 18:01 So I'm sure that I, if I really dug, I could find other confirmation bias examples. But I would say that this is probably the number one thing that we all suffer from. If you, if you think an industry is shit or if you think a particular business is crap or a tactic sucks, you are unlikely to change that information because of confirmation bias, even in the light of information that contradicts that and is factually correct and is detailed. So that's the hard thing about confirmation bias in my opinion. So I think that's the one thing I really need to work on the most of all these biases on here is confirmation bias. But being aware of it is key. Speaker 2 18:42 Yeah. I think something that helps, uh, few people that do good at this, at least something that helps us to have a bunch of different types of people around you and that influenced your life, both remote work in a personal perspective. I think having different perspectives influencing how you think and work and stuff like that can can limit that a little bit. But yeah, it's totally a really common one. Speaker 1 19:02 Yep. Yeah. And in fact, that's why I surround myself with friends who are not necessarily the same as I am politically because I want to have, you know, intelligent people that are giving me a different perspective than I'm not seeing all the time. Cause I don't want to just live in this bubble. And I think that's part of how we ended up with confirmation bias is that you find a bubble where the information isn't challenging and you very much, and then everybody likes to be just happy, warm and fuzzy there. So yeah, this is, this is a tough place to be. Speaker 2 19:31 The, the, the one for me, especially all of us that work in product businesses is a pro innovation bias. Uh, so all of us think that if we build this thing or this feature or this app or you know, in enables some kind of functionality to our users that it will solve all of the problems in our business. You know, people would be flocking in from all corners of the world and growth will be going through the roof. And I can tell you as someone who has built a lot of stuff, not a lot of stuff, I built a decent amount of stuff and a lot of it has sucked and not worked out that this is absolutely not the case. I think I, I don't think it's giving away too much, but inside tiny seed, the number one thing that every company struggles with is marketing. Speaker 2 20:17 It's not how can I build a better product? Because I think all of us like that, no a market and the problems that people are having in the market can create a product to solve that problem. But all of us have a hard time marketing as well as we want to. Um, and so we all kind of fall back on if I just build this thing, then people will come and it's like a, it's like a way out of really addressing the problem that we have, which is we all suck at marketing or we all could do better at it at least. And so we say, yeah, I'm not going to go do marketing but I'm going to go build a product because building a product is going to get me through. Like you know the slog that I'm going through of building a business where in fact like probably innovating in your space is not going to move the needle as much as doing a lot of other things that are just hard. So you say, I'm just going to go build because doing all the hard stuff is too hard. Speaker 1 21:12 Yeah, I call this feature ism, although it's basically the same thing where you basically create something and then overvalue it's utility because you've created it, you think it's really cool, but you haven't really vetted it with anybody else and you haven't really proved that that is the thing that they really need and want. So this is where it's really super critical to make sure that you're solving, you know, aspirin, morphine level problems and getting that feedback from your customers and saying, you know, what's the thing that you really need me to build next? And then figure out what that looks like from their input, not just you tacking on features. I've seen this in companies where we just like totally flipped a tech stack because everybody, all the developers, when I say everybody, I mean all the developers were like, yeah, we need to go with this cool new tech stack over here because that's, that's the thing we just really want to do and that's gonna make us, you know, and then you just justify it in whichever way possible. Speaker 1 22:08 It's going to make us so much more productive. We're going to write so much better code. It's going to come out faster. It's going to have less bugs, just all the bullshit we tell ourselves, and this has been happening in all 25 years of my career. Like I could, I could point to every two or three years where we've had that exact same thing happen, that exact same conversation in some form or another. Maybe it's a new Ui, maybe it's a new kind of underlying application server or a new language that you want to run or it doesn't matter. It's all the same. It's you just want to work with the cool new stuff instead of like trying to solve problems the old way or figure out what's the most useful here. It's tough. That's very tough to get out of. Yeah. Yup. Yup. Another bias that I think affects a lot of entrepreneurs and myself in particular I, I was very guilty of this for a strong period of time from when I started with Michael Berner Academy to probably about the time I did support mine and that was an information bias. Speaker 1 23:10 Basically this is where you're trying to get information when it doesn't necessarily affect your action. So I called myself an information hoarder, so I was on all these mailing lists and I was watching all these blogs and I had these RSS feeds and as people had cool stuff, I would just send myself email after email after email and be like typing some little blurb summary there and something in the subject so I could search for it easily just in case I needed it. So if it was about conversion rate optimization optimization or some cool new tech stack that I thought might be useful down the way, or um, a marketing tactic or how to open up a new channel or in, I still do this to a lesser extent today, but I try to focus it on like what it is that I'm looking at. Speaker 1 24:01 So if I'm exploring channels, then maybe I'll start storing information about other channels out there and how to reach out integration partners, um, linkedin ads, stuff like that. Before it was like just across the board, I was just hoarding everything and you can waste a ton of time doing this. An unbelievable amount of time. And I've seen a lot of wannapreneurs that are talking a good game. They're saying, you know, they're tweeting stuff out and they're pushing things out to, to social media and talking about entrepreneurship a lot. They are clearly consuming and hoarding a lot of information. But then when you ask them, well, what are you working on? How's your project going? And they're like, oh, I haven't started yet. Or Oh, I'm still in the ideation phase. Or A, we're still trying to figure park product market fit or just whatever it's, but you see the, the, the disparity between the two of those. And you've got to limit your consumption of information to what's really useful right now. If you're, you know, trying to build a product, stick to information about building the product. If you're trying to do your first channel marketing stick to information on that one channel because it just distracts the hell out of you doing that. It did me, it still does. I gotta be careful about this one. I still see this when crop up from time to time. Speaker 2 25:17 Yeah, no, this is a huge one. I think especially like you said, people that are just starting out. Yeah. You can read blog posts and listen to podcasts like ours until you get whatever, until you're 80 years old and you've never done anything. And that's really sad. So, I mean, I hate to say, cause we're content creators in this podcast, at least like stop listening to what everyone is saying and just go do work. Uh, but yeah, I think there definitely comes a time where like, Yep, get your basis, get a little bit information, then go do something and might not work and you'll learn a lot from that. But that's a lot better than just reading more blog posts. Just that experience. Yeah. The last one on my end that I wanted to talk about it as the recency bias. And I think this one's really interesting cause like we place a big importance on the last thing we heard, not the most important or the most applicable or something like that. Speaker 2 26:09 But just like the last thing that someone said to us about an issue that we're facing or something sticks in our heads so much stronger than basically everything else is what this bias says. Um, and I think this is really hard in situations where we're making like subjective decisions. So, you know, hey, do you like this color scheme or that color scheme? We're redesigning our homepage right now. And so we just went through this whole color scheme thing. Uh, and Eileen on our team, our designer is just like, I'm sure she was ready to kill me. Uh, because like I got a lot of input from other people about like our color schemes and stuff and pretty much every time another one of our friends or colleagues or people that I would float the idea sketches by, uh, or the design sketches by, they would come back and say, Yep, I like the number one or number three, or whatever. And so I'd go back to Eileen and say, okay, it's number three. It's definitely gonna be number three. And she would say, well, 10 minutes ago you told me it was number one. Craig, what, what the fuck just changed? And it was that someone that I know and respect came back to me more recently and said, you know, it should be this, not that it just kills you. It just totally kills you. Speaker 1 27:16 Yeah. Yeah. That one's really rough. Yeah. Recency. Uh, and this goes along with information consumption. Cause with, if you take the information bias and the recency bias, then you're constantly all over the map. If you can't sort of prioritize and decide what's important because you're just constantly getting new information, new sources, new things coming in. And so it just gives you the scatterbrained add entrepreneur effects. So those, yeah, that the two of those together is super dangerous. Yeah. Um, all right, well, so I've got two left that I would say are kind of important to me. Um, and both of them, we'll talk in the context of stuff that I've done in the past. So one of them is zero risk bias and this one is about your love of certainty. So we will do everything possible to keep risks out of our lives, out of our businesses, to try to minimize the harm that's gonna happen. Speaker 1 28:15 But the problem is this can be counterproductive. So like for example, in the plugins, uh, I had probably about a year or two ago, I realized that, you know, going through a major rewrite was a super risky thing to do because it put all my revenue in jeopardy. If we went through this whole rewrite and then I launched it out there and I lost a ton of customers, what would happen? Why, you know that seems like a dumb thing to do. So I instead of going for these big bang rewrites, we just went for minor incremental feature updates. Well Eventually Gutenberg is come along here in wordpress and it's kind of changed what the editor is looking like in the future. So now there's some of my competitors that have like revamped for this and I'm kind of just sitting back here going, well I'm not sure that we will only want to do that yet because all my customers are still asking for this other thing here. Speaker 1 29:09 So by going for the zero risk bias, I have kind of pigeon holed myself off and, and given myself a competitive disadvantage as a result. A sort of a side note to that, sometimes you will flip into zero risk bias after you do something that's really risky. So here's an example for me. I'm trying to remember when this happened. 2017 I did a price change and the plugins and we let it sit out there for about three months. And then after about three combination of factors, uh, I think I had lowered my advertising at the same time and then also change the price on the Combo as well as the individual modules and three months in it caught up to me and then all of a sudden like my sales tanked. As soon as your sales tank, like you freak the fuck out and it's no longer rational thinking. Speaker 1 30:06 It's just completely emotional. And my hat's off to anybody out there who can rationally then analyze and try to figure out, all right, here's what we did. We're going to change this one thing and then we're going to see we're going to wait a month and see like I was not doing that. I had a hard time doing that. I wouldn't say that I reacted to this very well. It was all hands on deck. We got to figure out what we're doing. So it was a week or two a testing. And at that point it was like, all right, we're switching these things back. Screw it. We're going back to the way it was. And so I ended up going back to the old channels and I changed one of the prices, not both of the prices back to a lower level and then suddenly things stabilized again. Speaker 1 30:50 So it definitely made me less interested in doing that big of a change in the future as a result of the, the zero risk bias. So that's, you know, and for me, in any business I've gotten to, the more success you get, I think the more the zero risk bias increases for me because I want to protect that success and not screw it up, which unfortunately has a counterproductive thing of being less willing to try cool and new tactics that could really actually push you out there. So I realize this as I'm doing recapture and as it's growing and as it's getting bigger that I, I'm feeling the same thing. Come on. So I'm consciously trying to avoid doing that and, and holding myself back because I realized that's counterproductive to the growth of recapture. I can't do that. So the other thing that I wanted to say here was blind spot bias. Speaker 1 31:49 And this kind of gets to the, the thing that we did at the beginning. And that is if you can't recognize your biases, then you're already at a problem right here. Because that's a cognitive bias in and of itself. And it's easy for us to see it in others, but it's so hard to recognize it in yourself and have the courage to actually admit it. And it still is a problem for me every day. Even now, like I have to catch myself and say, Dave, you're doing confirmation bias again, here can't do that. Or you know, this is zero risk bias, or this is information bias or whatever it is. Finding that moment, stopping yourself from committing that bias and then opening yourself up to the opposite of that will be the way that your business grows. And there's lots of ways to help with that. You know, getting a, a coach, uh, to help with that or even in your mastermind group, people calling you out on your shit. That's really a super helpful. Yeah, Speaker 2 32:44 yeah, yeah. No, I mean these, these last two are, are huge. I think and you know, somewhere that I am trying to, to, to counteract both of these in our business is with our team and the things that our team and joys and focuses on and has strong opinions about to try and help us all realize where are our blind spots are and not be, I don't want to say like stagnant but, but not think outside the box when it comes to risk and trying new things and, and getting like conservative and our business in some ways. I'm a huge risk taker and so I, I could, I could definitely try something that could tank the whole business but, but I think that I would only do that if we had a bunch of different perspectives in the business and they all were pointing the same way. Speaker 2 33:35 I would feel more confident about like, I probably am overcoming most of these biases because we have three or four or five different people all saying this is the right decision to make. And they're all coming from different backgrounds and have different perspectives and, and passions and all these kinds of things to where like, maybe that's the right decision, but, but I think that if you, if you get in a hole and aren't thinking outside the box and don't have a lot of other influence in your decisions, then you can make really bad decisions and things like the zero risk, you know, bias would, would, would really like come to kind of bite you in the ass. So, yeah. Super interesting. Speaker 1 34:11 Yeah. You've really got, if you want to get past your biases, you've gotta have people that you know and trust and that are willing to be brutally honest with you. So whether that's your team, whether that's a mastermind group, whether that's a one on one mentor that you have, that's the only way to truly find and eliminate those biases in a systematic and regular kind of way. So, yeah. Yeah. Uh, you know, we could talk more about biases on here, but I'm interested in finding out from you what kind of biases were important in your business that you've noticed that we didn't talk about today. Send us an email [email protected] love to hear about it. We'll link the rest of the biases in the show notes there. Maybe we'll talk about some more biases on a different show. But for now, if you felt that this show was valuable, we'd love for you to share this with one other person and maybe help them with their biases. Until next week, Speaker 0 35:12 thanks for listening to another episode of rogue startups. If you haven't already, head over to iTunes and leave a rating and review for the show for show notes from each episode and a few extra resources to help you along your journey. Head over to rogue startups.com to learn more.

Other Episodes

Episode

October 29, 2015 01:03:55
Episode Cover

RS038: Inside Look at Productized Services with Brian Casel

Today is a DoubleCast. Brian Casel, co-host of the Bootstrapped Web podcast and I sit down for a deep dive into the world of...

Listen

Episode

June 14, 2018 00:48:25
Episode Cover

RS136: Nailing Demo Calls

Today Dave and Craig are talking all about selling, and in particular selling on demo calls. If you have a more advanced app, or...

Listen

Episode 0

April 13, 2023 00:35:06
Episode Cover

RS279: Processing Brutal Feedback, and Hiring An AE

How do you define helpful feedback? What sort of customer opinions should you brush off? Dave shares his experiences with some brutal feedback and...

Listen