On Aggression

2026.11.08

CLXXV

[The Mudbowl; They’re Selling you, you aren’t selling them; Transmuting Strength; Transmuting Strength; Adrenaline Junky; Allergy to Aggression]

Thesis: Aversion to aggression and being a slave to it are both weaknesses.

[The Mudbowl]

I returned to my alma mater, the University of Michigan, this weekend with my fraternity brothers to watch the Mudbowl, a football(ish) game played in a pit of mud outside our chapter house.

Many of the people who came with me were, like me, one of the founding brothers who brought SAE back to campus, or among our first 2 classes. So, it was really cool to see that the event was absolutely packed... it certainly wasn't 5 or 6 years ago when we restarted the tradition!

The amount of energy that was there in the makeshift locker room before the game started was exhilarating. Team sports, compounded by fraternity ties, reawaken that latent tribal energy in us in a very intense way.

During the game, there were a few moments where it looked like massive violence was about to erupt on the field.

While the event I'm describing may seem like a hedonistic excess of violence, I'd say it’s a genuinely healthy outlet.

I actually think that a lot of environments teach an unhealthy lack of aggression and aversion to it. Eventually, I learned there is something exhilarating about being in the trenches with your group vs their group. It's a very human experience, perhaps one of the peak human things there is.

The aggressive mindset this sort of thing puts you in is such a powerful tool; that said, never falling in with it is just as dangerous as always falling in with it is.

I used to have an allergy to aggression; I was afraid of other people who were aggressive, and I was afraid to be aggressive myself. This means that I was terrifically easy to control by someone who was more aggressive than me.

What you’re about to read isn't a call to be aggressive at all times for no reasons; it's a call to accept it as a part of life and to learn to not cave when other people leverage it.

Funnily enough, it turns out that it’s just about as easy to control someone who is exclusively aggressive as it is to control someone who never is...

[They’re Selling you, you aren’t selling them]

I spoke with 2 founders I am fond of this week; pivoting was on their tongues. They asked me about the time(s) I did; but, I really don't think they need to pivot - I think they just need to be substantially more aggressive.

I asked more about their situation, and got a flashback to when Jack & I were near the start of WhiteWhale.

They have a TON of interest from prospective customers. Everyone is saying yes to a sort of free trial situation; at the end of this, they are getting some conversions, but are having a hard time engaging the people who say yes to the trial after they say yes.

In WhiteWhale’s case, we didn't have a paying customer for the first 4 months, but we had a ton of interest almost immediately. I took over a hundred sales calls and only got two closes off of it, one for $100 a month and the other for $200, after like 3 follow up calls each with the targets.

This was largely because I was not being anywhere near aggressive enough on the call, nor were we remotely prequalifying the people before they got on; we weren't positioning it as a sales call in which we were deciding if we wanted to work with them.

It was much more like, "Hey, here's this cool thing I built, do you think it's cool?" It doesn't sound like this team is down that rabbit hole as far as I was, but I still gave them the litany of items we did to correct the problem over time:

• Cut the free trial (replace with money back guarantee if needed)

• State cost & confirm they can make the buying decision or get someone who can BEFORE they book the call

• After rapport building, spend 90 seconds sharing your credibility, explaining what problem you're solving, and the outcome it achieves (this helped me a lot, I don’t think Jack does it as much)

• Restate success stories from users to the prospects

• Restate the same success stories in the marketing

• Make sure the prospect knows that you're actively disqualifying them if they're not a fit

• BAMFAM (book a meeting from a meeting), meaning schedule the follow up while they're on the phone

• Aggressive discovery questions to figure out what the problem burning a hole in their pocket is

That's a lot of stuff, and it's all aggressive. Some of the times I'd feel my throat tightening up when I quoted price to people in the past.

But it's a muscle you build.

And again, it doesn't sound like they're as far from this as I know I was, but seeing the extremes can be quite helpful.

[Transmuting Strength]

You'd think that being aggressive in one area makes you more aggressive in another automatically, but even when I had gotten over much of my aversion to physical aggression and roughhousing by doing Jiu Jitsu, I was still much more passive than I am now in business and in sales.

I'm sure it partially carries over automatically, but at least for me, to get it to really carry over, I had to consciously identify it and make an effort to move it over in the moment.

A few years ago, I had two cofounder breakups in about half a year. There were a slew of high cortisol moments in both of them.

I remember the opening salvo of the first one - it was a terrible hour long meeting. During it, I had to actively think, "you've had a 200 pound man sit on your chest and try to break your arm, this is nothing."

I'm talking of aggression, but I’m going to a moment when someone else was aggressive with me. This is critical - I really do believe that a pre requisite to being effectively aggressive is being okay with another's aggression and not reacting to it or letting it get to you. Then you are calm and are able to revert and become unrelenting when appropriate.

Really, I went into something of a month long war state. I visualized it as a match, and when I had the upper ground, pictured it as having someone pinned with me pressing, completely unrelenting, looking for an exposed arm or neck to lock the win.

Then, during the second breakup, it was still very stressful, but a lot less so.

Again, part of aggression is knowing what ostensible threats to ignore.

During this break up, I remember a call I took while at a family reunion in Oregon. I was sitting criss cross apple sauce on a patio chair in the sun. It was me, two co founders who were against me, and the other two members of our board.

One of the other co founders was being obscenely aggressive with me, asking repetitive, loaded, and leading questions, trying to get me to fall into the muck with him.

I don't know how many times I said something to the effect of, "I don't agree with that characterization, but it doesn't really matter right now; we're here to discuss what we're going to do going forward, not the past. If you could focus on that, I would appreciate it."

The jiu jtisu mapping to this is something like being in a defensive position and not giving way to false non threatening attacks.

Notably, this second breakup went a lot more smoothly after I held my ground in this way. There was still a lot of brainrot, but it was more back and forth agreement editing.

In the first case, I don't really know, but I do wonder if replacing some of my own aggression that I fell into with more deflection and less escalating would've resulted in a faster resolution. Now, I’m inclined to think so.

[Win by Not Fighting]

I wonder if the people who always want to fight only want to pick fights they can win.

I'm sure it's something about how I carry myself, but I've often invoked aggression from other people. I often deter it by being unflinching.

I'm thinking about a time I was at a bar at OSU with three girls. A guy kept approaching them, and they did not want him to. I was consciously blocking his body from them. He asked me what my problem was, and told me he knew MMA. I looked at him and held up my knuckles, which were quite scarred form bare knuckling the bag, and flicked my ear, which was inflamed at the time from some rolling. I said, "Same."*

He backed up, apologized, and actually dapped me up. I explained to him they were with me and he walked away entirely.

I’d speculate his inner monologue went from something like "This weak ass ****** is blocking me from these girls" to a respect for a guy whose trained to protect the people he's with. He may feel that his perceived strength entitled him to that which he can take by force, and showing him that he’d have a quite hard time doing so perhaps deterred him.

Note that any sort of agitated response on my end would've triggered further aggression on his part. I was very calm and nonchalant when I made it clear that I knew what I was doing.

Funny, my post about aggression is about deterring aggression by being calm and not at all aggressive?

_{*This is something of a bluff; I know grappling and a little bit of striking and judo and wrestling, so I guess that's "mixed martial arts", but I've never trained for a true fight like that.}

[Adrenaline Junky]

When someone is entirely aggro like that guy at the bar, I speculate that deep down, they are afraid of losing or being bested.

I'm hesitant to write this next session, because I don't want to encourage foolish or needlessly aggro behavior.

Many times, particularly during college game days, I've caught myself in intense staring matches with people, like yesterday.

Keep in mind, I don't really care about sports; I didn't even know we were playing MSU until day of.

I was walking around Ann Arbor, reminiscing and just going through WhiteWhale's costs in my head; during the lurk, I found a place where we could get 2.8% margin back and implemented it last night.*

A couple times, I got negative comments from Sparties. Both times, we were staring at each other for over 5 seconds before it happened.

One was quite funny, because he asked me, "What are you staring at?"

This is one of those things that makes me wonder if these people feel like they are on a separate plane that the 'masses' and are afraid of the idea that anyone else might encroach on that plane. After all, him and I were staring for the same amount of time at each other; him leveling that question as an accusation implies that he thinks he is allowed to do that, but I am not.

In response, I smirked back. In my experience, this tends to drive these people insane. Perhaps it reminds them that they’re not alone up there in their tower, and there are other people out there who aren’t intimidated by their haughtiness.

In this way, he’s just as afraid of aggression as anyone else; the aggression is more deterrence than grounded strength.

Now to be clear, I'm not saying you should go around staring daggers into people to get a hit of adrenaline and probe human nature; in Cambridge a couple weeks ago, I saw a dude in a mask going through a garbage can staring at me and I looked away after about 2 seconds. And in Puerto Rico, when I was walking past what appeared to be an illegal exchange of resources, I didn't even look over at it. What do I care if someone is buying drugs? And what the hell am I going to do about it?

In both these case, I was uncomfortable with the probability that these people are genuinely depraved with nothing to lose and/or had the means to harm me deeply.

That said, if in a situation very difficult to get around, like a random dude following your group at a bar, I think calmly and confidently demonstrating a total lack of fear may be the dominant strategy.**

Now, on the other hand, some random drunk college student who thinks he's god? Different story.

_{*Including this digression as a reminder that you can do real work in your head on walks.}

_{**I’m reminded of a Werner Herzog story. He was meeting a tribe in the Amazon, and one of the leads pumped a spear at his chest. By not flinching, he won their respect and was welcomed.}

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[Allergy to Aggression]

All of this is to say that I used to have an allergy to aggression, and I know a lot of people who have had such a thing, too. Over time, I’ve come to accept and integrate it as part of life, if even in some moments, I’ve leaned into it too much.

Running from it entirely is just as bad as being a slave to it.

Exploring it and probing it and understanding it so you know when to use it and what to do when others use it against you, on the other hand, is a great tool to have.

Getting hyped about your bothers going at it in the mud may seem outlandish, but it's a good way to understand it, I think.

Live Deeply,