Hi,

Since 2023 I’ve been hosting fireside chats with entrepreneurs through EO New York. Last week I interviewed two founders who have built a business together – and there was one line that I really liked.

What feels impossible to you is often routine to someone else in the room. You just never find out because nobody says it out loud.

watts not working: Carrying the thing you’ve been stuck on the longest without telling anyone.

Before the fireside chat I ran a short session with the EO New York board built around exactly this idea.

Everyone wrote down one thing they had been stuck on the longest.

Not something they hadn’t got to yet. Something they genuinely couldn’t seem to crack.

They paired up and the listener had one job – work out whether the thing was genuinely hard, or just unfamiliar to them. And potentially routine to someone else.

Most of them walked out with an answer they’d been missing.

watts really happening: There’s something about being an entrepreneur that makes us reluctant to admit what we’re stuck on.

Saying “I can’t figure this out” feels like weakness. So we don’t say it.

But the moment someone says it out loud in a room of peers, someone else says “oh, that’s it? I sorted that two years ago.”

That’s the whole game. Saying it out loud.

watts the real game changer: What struck me most about that board session wasn’t the answers. It was the faces when people realised their biggest stuck thing wasn’t actually that hard. It was just unfamiliar to them. Someone sitting three feet away had already been through it, already knew the way out, and had no idea they were sitting on exactly what someone else needed.

That’s what happens when you don’t say it out loud. The answer stays in the wrong room.

Have a week of saying the thing out loud!

Sel Watts

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