Kenneth Berger

It's not a yes unless it's a hell yes. You really want enthusiastic consent. Not just, 'Maybe, kinda. I'll try. We'll see. But yeah, absolutely, let's do this.'

What would be a hell yes day for you where you could say, absolutely, we can deliver on that? That way we're not making them wrong for saying no. We're saying, 'Of course you get to say no. Everybody gets to say no whenever they want. But let's get to a hell yes. What would it take for us to get there?'

If you go the other direction and you're humble and you say, 'I know I can't make you do anything, it's not my call to make. But man, this is really what I want. I'm just going to put it out there and ask.' That I think it feels really vulnerable and uncomfortable to not lean on data as a sort of way of saying, 'No, no, I'm right, so you should believe what I believe.'

The core idea is ask for what you want. Turns out when you actually ask for what you want out loud, you're much more likely to get it.

If you're more in the people pleasing camp, maybe you're used to not asking at all. You're hoping that people are reading your mind. And if you're sort of more in the control freak camp, maybe you're used to ordering people around and saying, 'Go do this now.'

Imagine if you're confused about how your founder is behaving. Imagine that they're terrified all the time, and see if that makes their behavior more clear.

My fear of not being good enough is what drives me to be great. And I just want to come out here and say there's other ways to motivate. You can motivate based on joy, based on vision, based on your inspiration in this vision of what you want.