“I think failure is definitely glorified to a degree. The goal is that you don't just fail consistently; eventually, you provide successful impact to others. But to the degree you're able to royally fail, and then royally succeed, that's way better than just royally succeeding. It's like a great underdog story in a way.” – Joe Percoco

Joe Percoco (@joepercoco) is Co-CEO and Co-Founder of Titan, an investment firm focused on leveling the playing field across the wealth spectrum. Titan manages over $500M for 30,000 clients and has recently been valued at $450 million at the close of their Series B round. Before launching Titan, Joe Percoco managed investments at Goldman Sachs and McKinsey & Company.

Chapters

  • The importance of working on your relationship with yourself
  • Y intercept vs. slope in hiring
  • Green/yellow/red light calendar auditing
  • T-shirt ROI assessments
  • Learning from the best coaches

Key Takeaways

Y-intercept vs. Slope in Hiring

When hiring, Joe puts more weight on whether the potential team member can grow exponentially in their role, rather than whether they currently have a higheAr level of skill.

“The idea of Y-intercept versus slope—I train a lot of our internal people on this subject—is, all else equal, we would prefer someone who had a much lower Y-intercept with a much higher slope, because it's like you're making a bet on time with them, that with training and care, they're going to be next level at their job.”

Green/Yellow/Red Calendar Audits

Each week, Joe audits his calendar to make sure that 90% of his time is spent doing the three core duties he has as a CEO:

“There are only three things I need to be doing as a CEO. One, making sure capital is there. So that's like fundraising, and so forth. The second is determining where capital should be deployed, that's strategy. The third is ensuring that capital gets deployed where it should be deployed. And that's execution.”

He color-codes everything on his calendar, from meetings to tasks, as green, yellow, or red, based on whether they align with his goals. He aims for a week that is at least 90% green.

T-Shirt ROI Assessments

Joe recommends assessing each project you take on like a T-shirt. Simplifying the decision matrix and using a t-shirt analogy helps everyone get on the same page with priorities.

“Is this an extra-large impact? Small effort? If so, that gets really high on the list. And so, it's a creative approach, as I'm sure a lot of people have an ROI-based methodology. I've learned that the T-shirt moniker adds a little bit more fun to the strategy planning exercise.”

Transcript

Daniel Scrivner:

Okay, Joe, welcome back again. I'm super excited to talk about habits, tools, and a bunch of just how you show up as your best self. So thanks again. So, first question, I always want to try to connect the dots between what we were talking about in our previous part of your interview and what we're talking about here.

Daniel Scrivner:

And I thought one really interesting angle to explore here was what have you learned and applied in your own life, in your own work from studying some of the world's greatest investors? And that can be everything from the importance of reading, the importance of time to yourself, I'm just curious what insight if you glean that you've applied?

Joe Percoco:

Most important one... You get a lot of inconsistent stuff and it's like, "Okay, I'm going to piece it together. Because these two things are the exact opposite." One of the few things that's remarkably consistent is mastering your most important friend, which is the little voice inside of you. And it's just crazy the number of people I speak to, CEOs running multi-billion-dollar companies, people who ran FAANG companies, and just how much effort they're spending to ensure that their relationship with themself is just fulfilling, content, calm, focused. And it seems just consistently a lifelong journey. And so for me, a lot of this stuff I've started to do over the last six to 12 months have been just related to that. And just really watering that relationship.

Daniel Scrivner:

Can you give any examples? I know, for some people that's journaling. I know for some people that's more solitude or meditation. What does that look like for you?

Joe Percoco:

I'm so bad at that stuff.

Daniel Scrivner:

I like that answer. That's great.

Joe Percoco:

I'm not even going to try to pretend. Maybe other guests do that, "Look, I meditate for 30 minutes at 6:30 in the morning. And then I have my avocado, toast, and coffee. And I've already journaled by then," because that is so not me.

Daniel Scrivner:

And it's still 6:00 am.

Joe Percoco:

And it's still 6:00 am and clock goes backwards, that is not me. And so, I can give a very real sense for like, "Look, all this stuff is exceptionally important. But it's often quite difficult just given the daily routines of life." And so for me, what I've tried to realize is just how do you foster good habits without having to make necessarily drastic changes. And so one of the most important things I do, I have an eight-minute walk to work.

Joe Percoco:

We have our office based here in SoHo, I live in the West Village, so I just walk down Prince street. And just literally walking to work, and just being grateful that I am on a meteor going around the sun. And I happen to be born on the one planet that's an oasis. And I'm going to die in a blink of an eye. And we should probably have a lot of fun with what we're doing. We should try to make a really big impact on this meteor before we gone.

Joe Percoco:

And other than that, not much else matters. And that's the attitude I walk into work every day. That to me is like my meditation, my mindfulness. I do other things we can chat about. But in short, it's very much a whatever mindfulness for dummies approach.

Daniel Scrivner:

I love that visual, just visualizing you walking down the street thinking about all those things every single day.

Joe Percoco:

Yeah, no joke, it actually happens.

Daniel Scrivner:

I want to talk next about standards of performance. And I think I was really curious because we spent a little bit of time in the last session talking about the bar that you have for people that you bring onto the team. And clearly, especially from your background, we talked about your experience at Goldman Sachs and McKinsey and the standards of performance there.

Daniel Scrivner:

So, feel free to answer this question in regards to Titan, in regards to you. But I'm curious for you, what are the non-negotiable standards of performance of just how you want to show up, how you want your team to show up?

Joe Percoco:

It can be summarized very simply to will skill and cultural fit, non-negotiable. Your will is just Olympian. You have a drive, to just put a crater in whatever you're working on. A lot of people use the term killer or hustle, drive, etc. That truly is for us just probably the most important bar. And what that goes to is just the idea of Y-intercept versus slope, which I train a lot of our internal people on this subject internally, which is all else equal, we would prefer someone who had a much lower Y-intercept with a much higher slope. And because that's like you're making a bet on time with them that with training and care, they're going to be next level at their job.

Joe Percoco:

I'll give a shout-out to, I was interviewing for people with five to seven years of design expertise, we ended up bringing a kid named Kyle right out of college, who beat out every other candidate hands down. If one were willing to look through the fact that he didn't have precisely the Y-intercept of experience, but his slope was incredible.

Joe Percoco:

The other things, skill, obviously, you can measure for one specific role. And then cultural fit is just the idea that a job is almost like a matchmaking role. A lot of people are really great. They might not necessarily be great for us. And so how do we ensure that puzzle piece fits together based on our cultural values? Because there's no necessarily a global maximum. This is the perfect company and everything they do. It's just a variety of local maximums and different flavors.

Joe Percoco:

And so that's a very modest one where I'm so honest, and finally, an interview saying like, "Hey, here's who we are, why don't you share a little bit who you are. And let's see if we found a match?" So those three things consistently show up across every person we bring on.

Daniel Scrivner:

Those are fantastic. And I love that framing of focusing on the intercept versus the slope. I've never heard it articulated that way. So you talked about and I love your frankness and your directness that you don't meditate, you don't journal every single day, but I'm sure there are things that you do every single day that help you show up as your best self.

Daniel Scrivner:

And it can be as simple as spending time in the morning looking through your day, how you manage your time, how you capture your thoughts, anything there that's worth sharing that you've really worked on [inaudible 00:50:02].

Joe Percoco:

I'm a voracious reader. I'm insatiably curious, and just in terms of the information I'm consuming. If I had any anxiety, it would be information anxiety. The more I know, the less I know. So I probably every week, we'll have at least two to four hours of conversations with people exceptional in their field that are just really wide-ranging. And I have a note-taking tool I use, and I'm just writing the whole time during this convo.

Joe Percoco:

So I have this repository, because my view is best-in-classes offline, podcasts, convos, books, people, you name it, this thing called best-in-class operating does not exist, you have to piece it together yourself. So in a way, that's a very journalistic function that I play every week, like a reporter. I'm here to find out what it is.

Daniel Scrivner:

So I love it.

Joe Percoco:

I recently recognized actually because of a journaling thing that my friend, another CEO made me do, I'm a naturally joyous person. And the things that give me joy, all have to do with movement and creativity. I bought a guitar, I love playing guitar, I play a lot of soccer. I'm Puerto Rican, love dancing. These are the sorts of things that just allow my brain or spirit to just go to a different place. And I can then look at Titan outside. But yeah, between these things, that's a full week.

Daniel Scrivner:

Sounds like a very full week.

Joe Percoco:

Yeah, those would be the top two, I think is just implicitly consuming information. I almost don't even need a calendar invite to consume it. It's already just like, "I will consume hours of information this week." The one tactic I can share, that's really been helpful, is thinking about one's time, like green light, yellow light, and red light. I know if you've heard this tactic before.

Daniel Scrivner:

No.

Joe Percoco:

Every Sunday, I look at my calendar, and there are only three things I need to be doing as a CEO. One, making sure capital is there. So that's like fundraising, and so forth. The second is determining where capital should be deployed, that's strategy. The third is ensuring that capital gets deployed where it should be deployed. And that's execution. Any task that doesn't fall into one of those three buckets is not green.

Joe Percoco:

When I look at my calendar, my calendar needs to be 90% green walking into any given week. It's so important or else one can just end up spending their time with all the other tasks. And one of the hardest things is obviously saying no. So, oftentimes, they say my role is a chief editing officer. Like the Latin root of decision is to cut. And so, I spend a big cutting exercise every week editing my own calendar.

Daniel Scrivner:

I love that. That was an analogy Jack used a lot, that square. Instead of calling people product managers, everyone was an editor and he was really big on that concept of and [inaudible 00:52:54] something similar. It's like sculpting and shaping in the importance of that, which I think is interesting. That is super fascinating.

Daniel Scrivner:

Yeah, I haven't heard of that exercise. I've definitely know a lot of people that do calendar audits, but I love that framing of green light, yellow light, red light, looking at your calendar and the bar of 90% green going in any week, which I imagine is hard. And you're probably looking at your calendar often. And you're looking at all the things that you need to say no to.

Joe Percoco:

It's so hard. We do another thing internally, which is called T-shirt ROI assessing. So, ultimately, the way we run Titan, there's a 10-page memo on our 10-year vision. We then have it, okay, what's the three-year goal? And then from there, we create a one-year KPI called a BHAG credit to Jim Collins, Good to Great, you'd have a big hairy audacious goal, decompose that into a physics equation. And then from there, you have quarterly projects.

Joe Percoco:

And for the quarterly projects, how a high ROI, so return. And then how much investment do you need on this project? And assess them like a T-shirt. Is this an extra-large impact? Small effort? If so, that gets really high on the list. And so, it's a creative approach, as I'm sure a lot of people have an ROI-based methodology. I've learned that the T-shirt moniker adds a little bit more fun to the strategy planning exercise.

Daniel Scrivner:

Super fun. Moving on to the next question. I'm curious for books or figures that have had a profound impact on you. I know that obviously, you're always consuming information, could be books, maybe that's not always books, but any books or figures that have had a profound impact on you or just things that you find yourself recommending giving to others suggesting all the time?

Joe Percoco:

Coaches. I've been studying for the last year, the best coaches that the sporting world has ever produced. Reason being, in sports, the feedback cycles on whether you're great or good. It is just so fast. Usually, once a year, you will be determined if you're good versus great. Usually, it will take the lifetime of a company to figure that out, or maybe at least every few years.

Joe Percoco:

And so, what I've then been studying is coaches, you can walk into enterprises that were previously underperforming, who have just a track record of controllably taking an org to the next level, until it goes back to that thing we're discussing earlier, which is the company OS is one of the most important things I need to build.

Joe Percoco:

And so hence, one of the best things to study are people who can systematically create best-in-class OS's. So, you can get a lot of good nuggets from Eleven Rings Phil Jackson's book. A lot of it's long-winded, but there are a couple of nuggets in there. Bill Walsh, The Score Takes Care of Itself. That guy went to a [inaudible 00:55:37] 49ers organization and brought them five Super Bowls.

Joe Percoco:

Just reading through his tactical list of what he did, ranging from teaching the secretaries the exact script, they should say when they pick up the phone, to forcing his players to tuck in their shirt. I've studied everything I could on Pep Guardiola, who just definitionally has done exactly what I said, just goes into league and league. He's literally destroyed the EPL and given it a rebirth with his own philosophy.

Joe Percoco:

Obviously, Andy Grove's high output management consistently as probably the number one book I gift, that's like Warren Buffet. If you are at all in the business field, and you have not read high output management with a pen in your hand, annotating it, and writing notes, you need to immediately go do that this weekend.

Daniel Scrivner:

Those are fantastic examples. And I'll link to it in the show notes, it would take me a couple minutes to go and look it up. But on that vein, Nick Saban is someone I've studied a lot. And a couple of years ago, there was a really well done. It's probably a four-hour three-part or four-part podcast episode, where it was interviews with Nick Saban, interviews with these other coaches, interviews with players, it was like a true a 360-degree story of what it's like-

Joe Percoco:

I love this.

Daniel Scrivner:

Yes. I'll send this to you after this interview, and I'll add it to the show notes.

Joe Percoco:

Send me the show notes too.

Daniel Scrivner:

Yes, I will. But no, it's incredible. And I think he, like a few people, he hasn't necessarily gone into an organization and turned it around. But he's been able to I think on the flip side, there's that piece. I think another thing we're studying I'm sure you probably agree is people that have just been able to have a prolific track record where it's very clear that luck is out of the equation, and there's a system in scale.

Joe Percoco:

What is Tom Brady do?

Daniel Scrivner:

Yes.

Joe Percoco:

No real physical ability. What has he done to acquire such expertise? You could say [inaudible 00:57:23] check. But no, the competitor in me understands a large portion of this is just wanting to provide the best impact one can have. And a lot of it is in your control versus out of your control. It's just, do you have the will to go understand and study it and learn and iterate? So, often find sports literature, despite it being poorly written, if you're willing to look past it, you can often get some exceptional anecdotes for how you run companies.

Daniel Scrivner:

I agree. I want to ask one more question around that which is sports sounds like have had a big impact on your life, from doing sports early on to studying coaches and teams and using that as just a well of inspiration. I'm curious, from your experiences playing sports, being a part of teams growing up, what has that brought to your mind that has shaped how you show up at work, has shaped how you've built Titan? What is the OS pieces that are encoded deep in your brain, from your experience there?

Joe Percoco:

Do you mean like tactics or do you mean principles that come to mind?

Daniel Scrivner:

Yeah, I think more principles. So I think more just like what... And I think there's everything from a focus on hard work, a focus on being a team. But it just seems to me that there's different principles in sports that some make it to business, some don't. So I'm curious what stuck in your brain.

Joe Percoco:

Titan has a very low degree of burnout. We have never lost a single person yet.

Daniel Scrivner:

It's fantastic, given that sprint that you talked about [crosstalk 00:58:48].

Joe Percoco:

Exactly. We're like a team that I truly mean it when I say it will take a decade to do X and then the next day we'll do Y. We're buckled up for a long period of time. One of the core principles behind that is you're trained to win and lose. And regardless, the thing that wakes you up in the morning every day is just the joy of being able to feel like you're in the right position on the field playing, having a blast, doing it for someone else. In sports, it's an audience. For us, it's our clients.

Joe Percoco:

And regardless of the scoreboard says win or lose, you go home, you get a good night's sleep and you come right back and you try your best the next day. And it's like that degree of humility and compounding that we bring that's ironically and pretty similar to the investing sphere.

Daniel Scrivner:

Yeah, focused on process. It's like that's what matters. You just need to show up [crosstalk 00:59:41]

Joe Percoco:

Focus on you're own outcome. We have a very high degree of rigor with what we do. So it's like we're not complacent. And we continually raise the bar on ourself. And so there's all this good stuff. When I observe some other entities and such, I just think one could have more fun and more fulfillment, as you go through it, if you just came to the realization that hopefully, you find something you do for a long period of time, which unlocks your best piece of work.

Joe Percoco:

And so that's our goal as a leadership team is we're the coaches, we're in service to all the position players at Titan, including myself, how do we just craft the best environment for them to set records in being a history books?

Daniel Scrivner:

I think it's fascinating. That definitely, to me feels very colored by the world of sports in a great way.

Joe Percoco:

Very much so.

Daniel Scrivner:

So I'm excited to ask these two closing questions and to hear your answers. And the first is if you can share a favorite failure.

Joe Percoco:

Favorite failure is that I fail all the time. It's great. And in particular, look, I think failure is definitely glorified to a degree. The goal is that you don't just fail consistently, eventually, you provide successful impact to others. But to the degree you're able to royally fail, and then royally succeed, that's way better than just royally succeeding. It's like a great underdog story in a way.

Joe Percoco:

And so, it almost like my best work comes out after I failed, because now I'm underdog and like, boy, do I have something to prove when I'm the underdog. And I suppose, tying it together, like when we were rejected by the venture community, or when I've been rejected by every job. It's like, you're being told, "Hey, this is great, but I think you can do better. And let's chat once you reach the next level."

Joe Percoco:

And so, Titan is very much like a wartime company in that sense. And that's part of that DNA, which is, I set that tone, which is like, "Look, we just did great. But I know we can do better." And it's not that the org is failing at all, the org is doing exceptionally well. I think just that motivation that comes with failure is just like adrenaline 2.0.

Daniel Scrivner:

I love that answer. And just to go a little bit deeper on that, I know that you guys got rejected more times when you're raising your first round of capital, then Robinhood. Talk a little bit about the number of times what that experience was like, and if there was an unlock at the end of that.

Joe Percoco:

So, I want to make for any other entrepreneur listening on the show, let's be clear, if you get rejected 10 times in a row, you should go back to the drawing board, revise your pitch, or get more data before you keep doing it again. But the failure I'm describing is a glorified failure. In hindsight, I should have totally pivoted process.

Joe Percoco:

There's that Einstein quote, or someone has that quote, "If you keep doing the same thing over and over again, and you expect different results, you're an idiot," or something. I literally did that until there were no more people to speak to, I thank God or else, I'd have 1,000 rejections in a row.

Joe Percoco:

But yeah, just visualize, your alarm goes off, you wake up in the morning, you put on your clothes, do your hair, whatever you need to do. And you're like, "Today, I have a pitch." And you go to the pitch. "Today, I got rejected." And then you do that again. And you do that again. And you do it again.

Joe Percoco:

I almost like back, I'm like, "Why did I not pivot process?" I guess I had stubbornness mixed with courage mixed with rebelliousness that I've since learned and gotten more maturity on. But nevertheless, it's a fun anecdote for Titans beginnings. And one that I'm really grateful we had. We never rested on our laurels. I know what it's like to taste death. I know what it's like to count every dollar. We had 10 grand in the bank at one point in May 2018, debated shutting down the business. And just that taste just doesn't leave you, it's just always there.

Daniel Scrivner:

Yeah. And it sounds like that engages the underdog part of you that then sounds like maybe you've gotten a little bit more mature about that. But that then boots up this part that's like, "I'm going to overcome this and figure this out."

Joe Percoco:

I asked in every final round interview still to this day, "Tell me about a time you're on a losing team." The guy ask it and not because I'm biased and like, "Yo, give me a list of your failures," more because pressure creates diamonds. And that's I know, pressure times will come at Titan, I want to see, do you become worse or better? And what is that like? How do you bring others together?

Joe Percoco:

Because yeah, we are in a 13-year bull market, whatever. And everything's going exceptionally well in the technology industry. And my view is the boats that can be the highest when the tide rises, they're the ones who are going to win and they're going to take so much market share. And we need to be one of those companies. So, it's almost like we're prepared for war, even though it's good times.

Daniel Scrivner:

I love it and you need to have that attitude, I think in the investment business. Okay, last question. What is your definition of success?

Joe Percoco:

Honestly, I realized I could probably have some cute fortune-cookie type thing. Again, I'm just thinking of getting this [inaudible 01:04:46], I'm a very raw, honest, and authentic person. To me, the things coming to mind, impacting others in whatever way one can. See that, whether it's a big way or a small way. Living fully, minimizing regrets, bam, you've done a great job, if you did that for a long period of time. Those are, to me, the variables that matter. I'm curious what yours are?

Daniel Scrivner:

Yeah, that's a really great question. It's hilarious because I haven't really articulated my own. But I think for me, I think it really... The thing has been resonating in my mind, and maybe it's cute, maybe it's not, but is that I think part of the definition of success. So there's a bunch of things, obviously, there, I think, when your definition of success, you want it to be something that can include your family, your community, the people that you care about in life, because I focus, like you do a lot on having an impact in work, but life is much bigger than that.

Daniel Scrivner:

But I think the biggest piece, honestly, and the thing that I've always returned back to that gives me just a ton of hope is this idea that you can always improve, and every single day is a chance to come back and get better at every part of your life into the areas that you're struggling. And I think really the way that I try to think about life is it's a pursuit to become my best self.

Daniel Scrivner:

And if I can achieve that, that will unlock everything else. And the main mantra there is, it's all about struggling well because I think if you're doing... Yeah, I think any of us is maybe being a little bit disingenuous, if we're saying that, I think if you have big ambitions in life, there's going to be a lot of struggle.

Daniel Scrivner:

Struggle is going to show up daily, weekly, monthly, yearly. And I think there's two ways to think about it. And the two ways to think about it are struggle is something that means that you're off track. And I think the other is no, struggle is pointing the way to the ways that you need to improve yourself. And I've always just found a lot of inspiration from that perspective on life.

Joe Percoco:

For many different reasons, you can tell I agree. And really, I love that definition for sure.

Daniel Scrivner:

Well, this has been fantastic. Thank you again, so much for the time. I think what you're building at Titan is super different than what's out there in the business. Super compelling. I love the vision of this ultimately being the conduit for anyone that wants to manage other people's capital to be able to reach an audience, I think that is interested and excited and wants to use that to unlock. So, thank you so much for your time, Joe.

Joe Percoco:

Really appreciate it. Thanks a ton for having me. This was a lot of fun.