Think Like a SHARK: Matt Higgins on Why Playing It Safe always FAILS

Start engineering your breakthrough with the Burn the Boads mindset. In this high octane episode of Right About Now, I sat down with Shark Tank Investor and RSE Ventures co-founder Matt Higgins to reveal why your backup plan is the very thing holding you back from exponential growth. From dropping out of high school at 16 to winning massive government defense contracts, learn the growth hacker secrets of extreme ownership and how to leverage your greatest asset, compounding time and building a legacy that outlives you. The sooner you put your ambition into production, the more years you have to reap the exponential gains. I was early on Matt Higgins and I was early because I burned the boats on this one crazy radical idea. When you try to figure out how to solve it all together, all these companies, these different careers, it's just as pattern playing out over and over again. I see something, I believe in something, and then I figure out how to overcome my anxiety and just go all in. This is Right About Now with Ryan Alford, a Radcast Network Production. We are the number one business show on the planet with over one million downloads a month. Taking the BS out of business for over six years in over 400 episodes. You ready to start snapping necks and cash and checks? Well, it starts right about now. What's up guys, welcome to right about now. We're always getting right, we're always talking about what's now, what's next, what's interesting, and look, he is the co-founder of RSE Ventures, he is Matt Higgins. What's up Matt? I like that. It's the skill of what's next, not what's last, exactly. We want what's now and what's next. Line them up, knock them down, let's go, that's what we're here to do Matt. You've been involved with NFL teams, we're talking Bitcoin, we're talking land, and Abu Dhabi, what makes Matt Higgins tick? I got a book behind me wrote a book about it, this idea of burning boats and commitment. The simple answer to that is when I was very young I had to make a really radical decision in order to escape out of desperate poverty, I grew up on nothing, selling flowers on street corners and eating government cheese and taking care of a sick mom, anybody out there who's had to deal with the desperation of having a sick parent, understands how that just changes your brain chemistry, to be honest, and your decision making, and when I was young I made a radical decision to drop out of high school at 16 to get my GD so I could go to college so I could get a job, making eight bucks an hour, literally none of this is hindsight buys. I had a decision making and everybody had told me at the time they're going to be branded a loser for the rest of your life and I had to come up against conventional wisdom to make that decision and it was the single greatest decision I ever made in my life. That single decision had dropped out at 16, start college at 16, pulled forward my entire career and Warren Buffett talks about this all the time in a context of money about compounding but he doesn't talk about it in terms of career. The sooner you put your ambition into production, the more years you have to reap the exponential gains. We were just talking about being early on Bitcoin and all these other things. I was early on Matt Higgins and I was early because I burned the boats on this one crazy radical idea. When you try to figure out how to solve it all together, all these companies, these different careers, it's just this pattern playing out over and over again. I see something, I believe it's something and then I figure out how to overcome my anxiety and just go all in. When I think about what you just said and I think about burning the boats, if you have a plan B, you don't have a plan A and the risk and the reward that comes from sticking to your gut starting production on something, you got to go all in. It's not because it's careless or reckless necessarily, but there's a certain hootspah and grit that I think comes from your background that I think probably drives you to that space but I think we got a little bit of nature and nurture going on, don't we? Me too. There's a great YouTube video if you want to Google it, anyone out there listening or there's a Navy SEAL at armors name and I should find it out but he has the entire audience. Everyone stretch your arms up as high as you can and everyone in the room stretches your arms up, right? And you watch in the video, everybody's stretching us now stretch an entire and everyone stretches one in showers. I thought you were stretching as high as you can. And the point of that is we all have another level of effort, energy and determination that we can only harness if we cut off our backup plan and this idea of burning the boats, a lot of people probably know it from Cortez, this idea that he burned the boats and he conquered the Aztecs. I'm appropriate in this war metaphor in a slightly different way. The boats that I'm talking about are the things that we all carry inside of our heads or in our past that make us hesitate when we have a vision for our own future that maybe isn't being validated by people around us. In my case, it was that I didn't know what to spoon to use, you know, the dinner table because I grew up so dirt poor I was embarrassed by my background that shame would make me hesitate. And so I wanted to write a book about to really prove exactly what you said. The mere presence of a backup plan is exactly the thing forcing you to need one. And at there's tons of science and psychology around what happens when you fully commit to your plan A, I always say just burning the boats doesn't guarantee you'll achieve your dreams but not burning the boats guarantees you never will. The thing I hacked into and it's against my nature, I am the most paranoid risk taker ever made. This doesn't come effortlessly to me but I do think the thing I hacked into is I put myself in situations where I don't have the answers and I reverse engineer the outcome by figuring it out. It's how I got on the shark tank when I had no business being there as a shark. It's how I ended up at Harvard Business School and the faculty as a person with a GD to a JD. It's not because I'm so special. It's just because I had no choice. I had a gun in my temple. My mom was dying in the room next door and the day I became press secretary at the mayor of New York she died that morning at 10 like it was a gun and that gun though made me hack into something I never would have discovered on my own because we're conditioned to believe that to play it safe is better than to play bold because my mom God bless her who always believed that anything that little boy set his mind to he could figure it out. I landed on this burn the boat strategy and ever since I've been sort of run the same play over and over again. You had a very specific thing that I think unlocked it for you. It's a tough thing to know exactly what that formula is that makes someone get to where they do those things. Right. Where they fully commit. Yeah. It's because we're so comfortable, right? Yeah. It's interesting because when I wrote the book part of me has this geeky academic brain that would love to write like a treatisee on neuroscience but that's not going to resonate with people. So instead I chose to take a different approach. I did it through storytelling. In my book I tried to dissect these moments where people had to sort of overcome their own objections and sort of fully commit the number one piece of advice I always have for. If you're not fully committing to what you know is true about yourself or the universe, it's usually because you have an enemy within or without somebody in your foxhole could be a spouse or could be somebody is trying to hold you back or something is happening within that you're afraid to face the dad who never set on proud of you. The incident that you're trying to conceal for me it was the shame of poverty and lack of refinement. But maybe for you it's you did something wrong and you're afraid to confront it. I always think focusing on the enemy within without identifying what's preventing you. When you face it fearlessly you're like that wasn't that big of a deal. Then I feel like you can fully commit. It's usually somebody being blocked by something in my experience and my book is little vignettes of trying to say how the person was blocked. I always talk so openly about my anxiety and apostro syndrome so I could let people know it took work. I wasn't born this way. How was your experience on Shark Tank beyond Kevin? It was amazing getting through. I tell the story in the book too about apostro syndrome is a great proxy. Damon John is on Shark Tank. Damon grew up like a mile from me. A lot of similarities. He's black on white. That's a big difference. But he worked at Red Lobster. I was in McDonald's. So we kind of connect on this like who's poor than who thing? I went into the dressing room and I was just honest when I was like man I'm so freaked out going on this show and he was like why and I was like I don't know just kind of feel like what am I doing here? And he was first MF to everybody else. He's like look what we did. Look what we came from. And then he told me the one greatest piece of advice I love sharing to this audience because you belong here because you are here. And I always say it's like a play-doh or soccer team is like you belong here. I think therefore I am. I belong here because I am here. Anyone here ever feels out of place. There is no final arbiter belonging. No one's going to let you know you've arrived. It's for you to realize if you're in the room you're meant to be in the room. So after that little pep talk the experience was amazing. Everything you see on the show oddly is the way it is on the show. I thought there'd be way more scripting and it's like lights camera action and also everyone is so rude steps on each other because it's real money at stake. And when I say rude I'm being kind of playful. There's no like show worry. Everyone's trying to win the deal. And as a mental exercise it's fun because when you're home you're like I would do that deal and you're like doing the map. And you're like trying to sell somebody and make you thinking that you're the one we should take your money. But at the same time you're assessing whether you want to do the deal. There's a lot going on in your mind at the same time which I think is really interesting psychologically. And most fundamentally how do you determine if somebody is truthful and worthy of backing in 40 minutes? Summarize for me the common attributes of the sharks. What are things that come to your mind? Even though they're all different personality different things but like you said all work and harder all more vested than you realize but those are all very successful people yourself included. What's the common thread for all of them? For someone that's been on the show behind the scenes you know what it is maybe what comes to mind? It's optimism. Each one of those people's fundamentally optimistic that anything is possible and anyone can do anything. That didn't say polyanish which would have been another word right like or naive but they are fundamentally optimistic and I'm going to Laurie and Barbara and Mara that's number one and then two fearless I've done deals with all them when ship's not going right. They don't panic. They hate investors even though I can be an investor too but I'm fundamentally a builder and a founder. Investors they get so panicky and the first one to freak out and they have a very myopic view. Wait I'm going to lose all my money. I was like what about that guy who's going to have to go home and face his wife and kids and he squandered the 401k for the business it didn't work out. What I found is when things go poorly they become more fearless and working with all them and then three I'd say everyone's a grinder. I'll give you an example what I mean by that. Sometimes when somebody doesn't have money and they're climbing up they imagine when you get money like I'm not going to work I'm going to be in the Caymans and other people that you should for me. It's not true. The most successful people I have are shockingly tactical. Mark Cuban is the single most responsive person I've ever met on email and in general I don't know how he does it and usually the response is the word no but at least it's responsive and each one of them gets involved in a level of work that I think if this audience heard that would be surprised. How granular and the takeaway from that is if you want to be successful you got to grind out the details. There is no presiding at any level. There's no send it and forget it unless we're talking about Bitcoin compounding them in the next 15 years. Those are the three so optimism grinding it out and fearless would be the three qualities that come to mind. You know what's interesting about that? The first one. You got to believe to achieve. It's really easy to be a hater and to not believe and to doubt and to critique. It brings me back to that state that might sound cliche but we all hear no one who's getting shit done at a higher level than you is sitting around talking shit about you or where you are or how you do it because they're too busy believing in what they're doing themselves. And optimism belief I put all that into the same thing. I think it's just they've got a vision they got to believe in something whether it's investing in something whether it's doing their own thing whether it's taking it forward. If you're a believer you ain't got time for the bullshit. I never met a wildly successful pessimist and people will say what about short sellers I was like that person's optimistic they're going to go down they're going to go anybody they're going to grence the grade and they're willing to risk everything with unlimited downside because they believe they're right that's pretty optimistic pessimism is somebody who thinks the deck is stack against them the system is rigged all that crap like please like some of that may be true from time to time but at the end of the day we all have the power to change our circumstances and the reason I love why we're drilling down on this. This book this one phrase to always anchor me to what I believe in and what I'm doing opportunity arrives before the tipping point of evidence and that's a simple way of saying like lightning and thunder you always see the flash of light first that's the opportunity it travels light travels many times faster than speed of sound and evidence is thunder it's unmistakable but everybody hears it and so if you want to be wildly successful you first have to be an optimist or else you won't even believe you saw the light you'd be like I as in my head you know and then the ability to act on it is the thing that sets winners apart and back to your point about belief it's why burn the boats is so important because the time to burn the boats is when the opportunity arrives before the tipping point of evidence when you burn the boats when everybody knows about it it's too late that being said if you're an innovative and dynamic and optimistic person when you think it's too late it's still okay like we were just talking about Bitcoin having a fun conversation it's not too late at all it's actually quite early you have to have consistency doing tactics and strategies without the proof of definitive success and it is exactly that you keep grinding you keep doing you keep stacking up once you have the proofs of success it's obvious but they need that reassurance they need to see it they need evidence at all times we're conditioned to need immediate feedback the ones that really get there are the ones that have the tolerance we're not exactly patient people probably but at the same time I'm urgent I can be patient yeah you don't you have to be willing to throw the chips in without knowing exactly what you're buying but you have belief in it when I get objections to my book which I love right I mean there's a lot of things to object to it's not safe or whenever yeah I have to pay the rent and I have answers for all that by the way anybody here who wants to objection but read the book read the book first but one thing I do get it always tugs me a little bit when somebody's like look I hear everything you're saying but I got no resources I got no autonomy I got no power I'm just trying to survive I have no opportunity to burn the boats burn the boats or believing in your potential your ideas doesn't require you to act on them when you have no power just practice flex your potential for being right just by acting as if you did move on if you saw a big coin seven years ago and you didn't have the money to invest in it so what it's the fact that you saw it I'd say anyone out there is not in a position because they're worth they're making 18 dollars an hour and they're in a situation that they don't want to be in and they feel like they have no power to express their ideas just practice identifying patterns of the universe and write down what you would have done if you had the power to do something about it those reps count as long as you're being honest like you would have done it and I think sometimes people dismiss when they don't have the resources to go all in as if those ideas don't count when I was at the darkest days and I had no power to act on things I would still keep scoring damn if I had some power money I would do this and then the day came when I did and it turns out by the way you make even worse decisions when you do because you can handle the loss which is very corrupting you know you have a million dollars here on this you're going oh no she's going to have to but anyway say anyone out there who's listening who feels like they don't have the power of the autonomy the reps still count even if you don't have the capacity to do anything about it Matt can you talk that contract with the government what it's ultimately what the value of that contract is over three five ten years we had done a million dollars a revenue after six years of work but then in the seventh year we'll probably do 50 million dollars a revenue this year and we'll eventually end up doing half a billion dollars a revenue in another seven years the thing about this work it's called the value of death for those who don't know how hard it is to build a defense tech company in the reason it's called the value of death this is a long delta between when you first make a prototype and you have all these early signals like oh this is necessary government is great at like encouraging you but the problem is a program of record which is the thing that sustains you takes years and years and years to go there there's this big value of death where it's very hard to raise money but once you get a program of record you kind of get to the other side what I love about our product it's called the C-100 it was reverse engineer specifically for what does the warfighter need to call on their own air support how do we make something that really is responsive or is I think a lot of things out there like science projects where like oh we really cool they could do this like okay that's great what what happens when it rains all these practical things we've created an incredible company that marries operators and engineers under one roof and so the product is designed with the warfighter in mind that gives you some context of it but it was no fun when the revenue was zero and we don't really know what the future holds talk to me about where people can learn more about what you're doing find your book all that stuff I'm on Instagram mhiggins I'm on LinkedIn a lot for those who are on there I'm on Twitter same handle my book is on amazon if you read it you like it DM me I burned the boats when I started back to being very tactical what's a way for this to be an enduring classic and I decided I'm going to DM every single person that ever comments publicly on this book for however long it takes to get to a thousand reviews and I am 27 away from that please put me out of my misery it's been two years if you read that book DM me and my theory back to doing things other people won't do was that if somebody were to write a review of the book they probably are evangelical and they're more likely to pass the word books become classics because people were to mouth and so my theory is I could get more people to review it it would eventually be an enduring classic and outlive my life that was the goal I said I really appreciate you coming on show hey man you know to find us Ryan is right calm you know I were right hey guys like mad haggins coming on the show check out his book burn the boats and you'll find me on instagram at Ryan offer we'll see you next time we're right about now this has been right about now with Ryan offered a radcast network production visit Ryan is right calm for full audio and video versions of the show order one choir about sponsorship opportunities thanks for listening