Sam Corcos on Delegation and Letting Go

Tim Ferriss

I've been looking forward to this because I know how organized and systematic you are. And for people who didn't see what came before this, I asked you, as I asked many of my guests, what would make this a home run or time well spent? And you said, well, I know that is one of the questions you like to ask based on my research. So let me open my notebook and you had answers. And one of them that we can mention is an ambitious goal, but I think it's an achievable goal, which is to make this one of the most comprehensive tactical guides to delegation. And within that, there'll be a lot of process and I have a lot to learn. Let's begin at the beginning. When did you start taking delegation seriously?

Sam Corcos

Well, so true story. It came from reading your book almost exactly 10 years ago. And I posted an ad in Craigslist for an EA. I had nothing for her to do. I just knew from reading your book that this is a skill that I need to develop. I ended up hiring Lori, who's been working with me now for 10 years. She showed up. I thought,

Sam Corcos

Maybe we'll find somebody who had a legal background in the Philippines.

Tim Ferriss

So rematch, just so I'm clear on terms, doesn't mean that you're matching that person with another person in the organization. It means let's find an alternate option.

Sam Corcos

Let's just find a different person to be your EA. A whole new process, different people, different background. And then the second time around, it was night and day difference. She understood all the terminology, and his output easily doubled, and his stress levels just really dropped. He was able to manage his time, had way more time for deep work, and it really just improved his satisfaction. So I would say that's a big one is just don't, if you have one bad experience, don't assume that you can't have a good one. Other reasons, one is imposter syndrome is another one. I'm reminded of a recent conversation I had where somebody was struggling to delegate and one of the things they said is, well, who am I to tell them to do this task that I don't want to do? And I find reframing is usually a good way to do it.

Tim Ferriss

There any, we're going to bounce around a lot, and we are going to zoom out to the company level in a second. But read these books. Are there any books that you strongly recommend or require as reading for two groups? People in the company, so employees, and then EAs of people who work in the company, or your EAs?

Sam Corcos

We don't have a required reading list for the EAs. We have a strongly recommended reading list for a lot of people at the company. What does the strongly recommended reading list look like? So we actually, we have a team book club every month where we read these books and we've been around long enough to where we've recycled some of them and they've come back up. Some that really come up a lot are No Rules Rules, which is the book on Netflix culture. 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership is another one, which I know you're familiar with. Yes, indeed. Another one that I know you're familiar with is Nonviolent Communication, which really should just be required reading for all people. For all humans. Yeah. I have found one sticking point with that book is the title. I recommended it to a friend who had the exact situation that this book was meant to solve. And he said, well, the problem I'm dealing with doesn't involve any violence. It's like, no, no, no, it's not the point. It's really, it's about non-threatening communication. It's about how do you have these conversations without triggering that fight or flight mentality? Great

Tim Ferriss

Yeah. So just out of curiosity, if you're open to saying, and you're open to saying a lot, but I understand if it's not everything.

Sam Corcos

What was the loom of the 40-person meeting that was shared externally, or why was it shared externally? The loom that was shared was one of our Friday forums. What is a Friday forum? Oh, sorry, that's our team all hands. We do it every week on Fridays. How large is the team now? The team's 40, 50 people. 40, 50 people. And so many people show up live, so they don't watch the recording. So that's fine. And then some people watch it after the fact. We also have a number of all of our memos. We also use Notion pretty religiously. Once you learn how to use the Notion database features, they're actually extremely powerful in the amount of leverage you can get from it. All of our memos have a summary loom at the top, any sort of meaningful memo. And so somebody will do a five-minute walkthrough of something that they wrote, and many people just watch those looms. So it's another thing where people can share.

Tim Ferriss

What is the format or the agenda for the

Sam Corcos

Feel like you have to compulsively check Slack. Because it's like, oh, is there a new piece of information that I want to check? And there's a lot of data on this. RescueTime did a study that I think most tech workers can't go more than six minutes without checking their communication tool. And a lot of that is because of Slack. And they're just constantly checking. You're trying to write code, but they have this compulsive need to, oh, let's just check. Oh, there's new information.

Tim Ferriss

Rescue time, little known fact, way back in the day, one of my first ever angel investments. Is that right? 100 years ago. Cool. Yeah. It's a great mission. Great mission. I want to talk about information inputs. This may be a good place for a sidebar on this. So avoiding slot machines, new sobriety, term I've used, which I think is probably quite similar as sort of the low information diet. But what is new sobriety and what does that mean for your day-to month-to experience?

Sam Corcos

I've been fully news sober for almost 10 years. I

Sam Corcos

I think the biggest thing is people really want to jump into it immediately. Now by people, do you mean the people who join? They want to jump into it immediately. And we have an onboarding checklist in Notion. We have a template. We copy it for each new person that joins. And they have a set of tasks that they do each day. It's pretty well guided. I can share the template with you if you're curious. That'd be amazing.

Tim Ferriss

I would love that. Is this for all employees or EAs specifically?

Sam Corcos

All employees. All employees. Okay. And there is a video of me at the start of each week. It's a loom where I specifically say, hey, at this point, people usually want to skip onboarding and start jumping into their tasks. Don't do that. It's always a mistake. Really take onboarding seriously. Our onboarding process is a full month, and we don't expect people to start producing for a month. It really does take that long for a lot of people to get fully up to speed, and we help guide them in more slowly. Read these books. Read this documentation that we have about how we built our culture. Especially for our case, because the way that we operate is very different than a lot of people's previous experiences. And

Sam Corcos

A technical question.

Tim Ferriss

Can you blur if, for instance, I've had this experience where I record a loom, it's a really good loom for an external party. And then I noticed like, ah, shit, like I have a tab or something open that displays some sensitive or like my iMessage is off to the side, but I did a full screen recording, and it's like, I don't want to compromise the people I'm communicating with in that way.

Sam Corcos

Do you have the ability to blur or crop or anything like that? You can edit within Loom. I think they might have introduced a blur feature somewhat recently. Yeah, or just a cropping capability. Yeah. I have to check. That would be very useful. Yeah, they might have it because they have an editor within it. If not, there's definitely, like our EAs do this already. For our Friday forums, we sometimes have sensitive information in there that we don't want to share publicly. Sometimes it's, the most common one is something related to a third party that they don't want shared. And so we still talk about it as a team, but then we cut the audio for that part and we blur out anything written about it. And so there's definitely a capability to do it. It's either done in Loom or it's done externally, but it's not that hard.

Tim Ferriss

Okay. We are going to weave back to Calendly because we were kind of joking slash seriously discussing how a lot of people get offended with this tool, but that is the micro level. I don't want to go immediately to tools, although people might think that's where we're going next. To-do lists to calendar. Could

Sam Corcos

I've worked with a lot of people on our team, people who are friends of mine through this. And the thing that almost always happens is they have this long to-do list and I say, all right, here's what I want you to do. Take everything on this to-do list with the dates that you think they'll get done by, which is usually this week or next week. And I want you to just put them on your calendar with the amount of time you think it's going to take. And then we'll have another follow-up call next week, and we'll see what happens. And then we have the call. And then they say, this process doesn't work. I say, why is that? I said, well, I tried to move it over there, but there isn't enough space in my week to fit all these items. It's like, yes. That's the point of the exercise. There literally is not enough time. Your time is finite, and the number of digital items you can add to a to-do list is infinite. You are working with the wrong constraint, which is like the amount of items you can fit in a database row, as opposed to the number of things that you can fit in your finite time of your Calendar. And so we then work on, all right, you probably need Slack during the course of the day. Usually like 50% is a good target because things come up. Oh, I see. Not the tool Slack, but space, extra space. You need extra space in the day. And so we work on things like, for me, I process a lot of email.

Tim Ferriss

And

Tim Ferriss

Finish?

Sam Corcos

Yeah, the answer is you just skip the to-do list step entirely. So when I get a new task, a lot of my tasks effectively come in through email. So I'll get an email. And this is also another thing that I worked with a couple of people on who really, really struggled with email. And the thing they struggle with is using their email as a to-do list which is a very common thing that people do the problem it creates a lot of anxiety when you have this stack of uncategorized Things it could be 15 minutes it could be 50 hours you have no idea until you open up each one individually to figure out how much work it is and so the same process of translating your to-do List into your calendar you can do the same thing with email, which is I worked with somebody recently where I said, all right, let's open each email. How long is this going to take you to respond to? These are like the chunkier ones. It's like 30 minutes. Great. Market is done. Copy the link and put that link in your calendar. So you're going to spend this 30-minute block responding to this email. What's the next one? That's going to take me a full hour because I have to write something for them. That's interesting.

Tim Ferriss

So the clearing of the inbox then is really, in some capacity, scheduling the proper amount of time to reply to these things. So you're not looking at this undifferentiated stack of shit

Tim Ferriss

All right. So how do you course correct? What does that look like? Are there certain tasks or types of work or interactions that you just categorically do not engage with now? Are there kind of no categories for you? It's more that having the awareness.

Sam Corcos

I was talking to somebody recently about this where we did a values exercise and they came up with a set of values that they have. And then it's a bit of a trick question because then you say, all right, let's go over your calendar and how you spent your time. And they'll say, oh, my values are friends, family, this, that. And it's like, oh, how'd you spend your time? Like YouTube, Instagram. Do you notice how none of these things match? Like your actual priorities are consuming news. Your actual priority is doing sports, which is fine. There's nothing wrong with that. But empirically, your priorities are this. How you spend your time are your priorities. And that's a difficult thing for people to understand. But it really is like an epistemological problem where the example would be if you're an axe murderer, but you go your whole life and you never murder someone with an axe, are you actually An axe murderer? The act is what makes you what you are. Yeah. I think this is a Ben Horowitz's book. Like what you do is who you are. That is what it is. How you spend your

Tim Ferriss

And something I haven't tried. So I should try it. All right. My next question is related to a bullet for an interview, a prior interview you did, which, or actually, no, it was not an interview. It was a podcast, Founder Dynamics podcast. And the, I suppose, synopsis for the purposes of our conversation is that this is an episode that gives a feel for what it's like working with you and how other people perceive you. And I recently interviewed Duskin Moskovitz, co-founder of Facebook, co-founder of Asana, current CEO of Asana. And in prep for our conversation, they also did an immaculate job of prep notes they sent a number of different things. One of them I had not seen before, and I've had some interaction with Dustin over the years, was a, in effect, I can't remember the title, but it's working with Dustin as a document. It's basically a user guide to Dustin and it lays out all sorts of things. His temperament, his preferences, the things he hates, his Enneagram type. And I found it very compelling to the extent that I'm probably going to create something like that. Because it could also be useful for external parties, contractors, agencies, who knows. Do you have something like that? Yeah, totally. Or what form does it take?

Sam Corcos

Exact same format. We both took it from the same person. I don't remember. I think he referenced it in the podcast, but there's a specific person who popularized this and we largely use the same format. It's also part of our onboarding. One of the deliverables at the end of month one is each new hire writes their own user guide. And it's been super helpful.

Tim Ferriss

Okay,

Tim Ferriss

And something I haven't tried. So I should try it. All right. My next question is related to a bullet for an interview, a prior interview you did, which, or actually, no, it was not an interview. It was a podcast, Founder Dynamics podcast. And the, I suppose, synopsis for the purposes of our conversation is that this is an episode that gives a feel for what it's like working with you and how other people perceive you. And I recently interviewed Duskin Moskovitz, co-founder of Facebook, co-founder of Asana, current CEO of Asana. And in prep for our conversation, they also did an immaculate job of prep notes they sent a number of different things. One of them I had not seen before, and I've had some interaction with Dustin over the years, was a, in effect, I can't remember the title, but it's working with Dustin as a document. It's basically a user guide to Dustin and it lays out all sorts of things. His temperament, his preferences, the things he hates, his Enneagram type. And I found it very compelling to the extent that I'm probably going to create something like that. Because it could also be useful for external parties, contractors, agencies, who knows. Do you have something like that? Yeah, totally. Or what form does it take?

Tim Ferriss

Next, I would like to chat about your sabbatical briefly. And that may not be the term that you would apply, but you took a year off after your last company and you studied two things, theology and network theory. Why did you choose these two? And I understand these words separately, but honestly, I have no idea what network theory refers to. So how do you choose these two? And then could you please explain network theory and what has come of that?

Sam Corcos

I had a whole list of topics. Some of them ended up being much simpler or more shallow than I was expecting. One that was simpler, I had on my list of things. Bigger calves.

Tim Ferriss

How can I get bigger calves?

Sam Corcos

One of them was getting up to speed on the state of AI. This was five years ago now. And the last time I had done it was maybe 10 years ago. And it was really hard. There were no libraries. There was no real tooling. And then next time I get into it, a friend recommended the fast AI course. And it was so easy. My goal was to create something that can recognize images of cats.

Sam Corcos

It's like, this is like grace.

Tim Ferriss

There's a lot of reinventing the wheel.

Sam Corcos

Yeah, like, no, no, it's totally different. It's like, it feels very similar. This feels a lot like saying grace.

Tim Ferriss

Yeah, there's a great video. It's an oldie. The one that kicked it all off, maybe called Ultra Spiritual by J.P. Sears way back in the day. Oh, it's basically alternating between new age hodgepodge spirituality and very clear monotheistic like judeo-christian stuff and it's like same same kind of for sure or at least The attempt is made so where did you then end up after this study And then we're going to come back to the network theory. But what was the effect that that had on you?

Sam Corcos

Or were there any sort of lasting changes of perspective or behavior or priorities or anything else? Was this recognizing the separation of community ritual that form of religion and the deep spiritual belief side of religion and i hosted a salon dinner on this as i often do and i had What i thought was this unique insight and of course i brought all my friends who are way better read on this than i did and i i opened it with my thoughts around this separation and one of My friends who was there was like yeah that sounds a lot like varieties of religious experience by William James. And

Sam Corcos

Was this recognizing the separation of community ritual that form of religion and the deep spiritual belief side of religion and i hosted a salon dinner on this as i often do and i had What i thought was this unique insight and of course i brought all my friends who are way better read on this than i did and i i opened it with my thoughts around this separation and one of My friends who was there was like yeah that sounds a lot like varieties of religious experience by William James. And he explained it. It's like, yeah, it's exactly the same thing. And he wrote about this more than a hundred years ago. I thought I had this unique insight. And it's something that's been known for a long time. I would say one of the things that came out of it more than anything was an appreciation and a deeper respect for the positive aspects of religion and what it does for people. I think the deep dive into epistemology also was pretty mind-bending, where it caused me to recognize that this is actually something that I'm still wrestling with, is that I really Do not believe there is such a thing as objective truth. All truth is subjective. You can maybe asymptotically approach truth, but there is no such thing as objective truth. The only way to believe in that is to believe in some specific higher power. Where I struggle with it is that that path almost always leads to postmodernism and to really bad things. And so I struggle.

Tim Ferriss

Can you define just, what do you mean by postmodernism here?

Sam Corcos

Postmodernism meaning like your truth is just as valid as anyone else's truth. Just like complete moral relativism. 100% moral relativism is exactly, it is postmodernism in a nutshell. It's like your truth is just as important and real as anybody else's. There is no truth. There is no commons that we can agree on. It's just purely individual truth is all that matters. That leads to bad outcomes.

Sam Corcos

And so I struggle.

Tim Ferriss

Can you define just, what do you mean by postmodernism here?

Sam Corcos

Postmodernism meaning like your truth is just as valid as anyone else's truth. Just like complete moral relativism. 100% moral relativism is exactly, it is postmodernism in a nutshell. It's like your truth is just as important and real as anybody else's. There is no truth. There is no commons that we can agree on. It's just purely individual truth is all that matters. That leads to bad outcomes. Just in every society that has these postmodernist beliefs, Marxism as an example, tends to lead to really bad outcomes. And so I'm still struggling to figure out how one believes that without leading to some really negative outcome.

Tim Ferriss

One of my pet theories I've had for probably four or five years now, watching the development and ubiquity of, say, social media and watching elections and watching very sophisticated Disinformation, misinformation campaigns and how people, I don't want to say by and large, but a lot of folks have ended up in this post-factual, you just can't know what is real, apathetic State. And some people certainly then kind of bleed over nihilism for a lot of other reasons.

Sam Corcos

Yeah, yeah. And so at some point, I realized, you know, I'm just going to change my list. I'm only going to have people on here who I think also want to spend time with me. So it's in both directions. And so if I keep reaching out and they keep canceling or ignoring, it's like, that's fine. I don't take it personally anymore. It's just they maybe have kids now. They have different life priorities. It's 100% okay. And maybe in five years, we can be friends again. It's not a big deal. I used to take these things a lot more personally, and I just don't anymore. And so network theory is really understanding why some of these relationships are more valuable in whatever way you choose to describe value. Is it professionally valuable? Is it personally valuable? Whatever the thing is. And there are several categories that are especially relevant for interpersonal human networks. One that is, it's a really underappreciated form of network centralities. It was called eigenvector centrality. There's a famous paper by Paul Granovetter, I think written in the 70s, called The Strength of Weak Ties. Cool title. Yeah, it's a very important paper in network theory, which it talks about how much more important weak ties are than strong ties. How you are more likely to find your next job from somebody who is an acquaintance rather than a friend.