What principles does Joe Hudson use to make decisions?

Joe Hudson says five to seven principles settle about 80% of his decisions, and he tests each one by asking whether it gets him where he wants to go most of the time and solves most of his problems. He compared this to Berkshire Hathaway investing only when its criteria are met. His examples are treating everything as an iteration, building the part of a project you know least about first, and connection. His company requires staff to run three to five experiments a quarter on doing their jobs differently.

• Hudson's catalytic converter example: build the unfamiliar part first so you do not have to rebuild the car around it.
• Hudson said he decided to come on the show by running it through his iteration and connection principles.

▸In their words

“I have a set of principles that I make 80% of my decisions by.” Joe Hudson · at 17:58 — open in the transcript →

Source: our own transcription of the episode. The full conversation is on Modern Wisdom (2026-11-02). Read the whole episode summary →

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