I’m a founder, CEO, brand builder, investor, tech geek, family man and juggernaut. I’m most known for RevZilla. Expect a bit of storytelling, inspiration and insight as my different roles and perspective continue to evolve. I won’t settle and neither should you.
Our five(!) kids have been home for about 14 days, and she supported me in spending about 12+ hours a day for the last 10 days in my office building and launching SavePhillyEats.com. She’s equally supporting the project by supporting me while surviving a daily outnumbered-parent home-school rodeo.
That said, the site is a simple digital hub to aggregate all of the unique culinary experiences and offers that Philadelphia restaurants and bars are doing to generate revenue while they are closed due to the coronavirus. (Learn more.)
My close friend David and I brainstormed that if we could pull together some big Philly food names for a unique and localized site, we could potentially help a much broader swath of the culinary landscape in town.
You can visit SavePhillyEats and see all the current offers and experiences. You can follow us for updates. If you dig it, please share it on social with #SavePhillyEats and tell your friends. You might even catch me in a video or two, looking all tired, shaggy and pale. #somuchdistancing
It’s late and my eyes are blurry because we hard launched today after standing it up on Friday.
What a wonderful startup kind of tired, the kind of tired that lets you know you redlined for a while – but believe people may find value in what you helped create.
It also feels amazing that we did something to help our friends in the food and bev’ space who really need it right now. #helperhigh
We all have different abilities. We have to continue to seek out the people who can be benefitted the most right now. We all have to lend our hands, help and lead.
Special thanks to the #SavePhillyEats seal team who absolutely got sick of my voice on Zoom, but helped knock this out of the park in literally a week:
After leaving RevZilla, there were many things I thought I might miss: My team, the problem-solving, even my routine, to name a few. In truth, I did miss them all, but the last 36 months have taught me that the one thing I can’t live without is personal growth. (If you have read any of my previous posts, this theme is not new.)
Sure, there were some early days I sat around and frittered away time in sweatpants like George Costanza would have. I needed the break, but I also let the tide go out too far in those moments. It always left me feeling less than unfulfilled.
Since then, I’ve been focused on growth as the input for the most fulfilled output.
I spend the bulk of my time focused on learning and gaining perspective both personally and professionally. It’s a bonus when I get to do it with amazing teams or companies. Sometimes I get paid for it, as it coincides with helping a team. Sometimes I don’t (THF| TFI). It’s always worth it, though.
In the last few years, I have toyed with the idea of going back to school, business school to be more specific. I know I have a defacto Thornton Mellon MBA, but I’m always curious about what I don’t know I don’t know. For now, I am not sold the time / value equation is worth it, so I look for ways to dive deeper via smaller bites, especially in areas like strategy, finance and marketing.
Recently, NYU Professor Scott Galloway, one of my favorite thinkers in consumer, tech and leadership, announced he and his team would be doing a 2-week online “Strategy Sprint” related to consumer-facing business strategy in the digital age.
The online course under the new Section4 brand spanned 15 days and consisted of video case studies, a couple of 90-minute live Zoom classes and a final project focused on applying what we learned. It cost $500.
Time Commitment – The whole course was about 12.5 hours (I tracked it). 3 hours were live Zoom classes, 4-5 hours were doing my final project and the rest were lessons broken up into video case studies. Scott’s team was on the ball, responded quickly and the Slack channels and community were on point.
Coursework – Even with my strong baseline for the material coming in, 40% was net-new and the rest was a deeper and more organized dive into the familiar Galloway principles that he calls the T-Algorithm. These are the strategies used by B2C companies to, in his words, “potentially achieve trillion-dollar market cap trajectories”. If you listen to Scott or have read The Four, this will be familiar, but much more in-depth.
Final Project – The final was to perform a strategic analysis on a company and sector you know, and apply the T-Algorithm to ultimately inform a business case for the chosen company. I used Comoto / RevZilla and found it super helpful in crystallizing my thinking around suggestions I have made and will continue to make at a board and advisory level. It’s nice to have more concrete cases of value creation and impact at my disposal. Great artists steal…
Strategic Process – On the strategy front, the process followed a familiar framework of creating a “value curve” to graph potential strategic differentiators. The graph was a mix of Galloway’s T-Algorithm elements coupled with relevant domain-specific items of our own addition.
We then prioritized the potential strategies we charted for maximum value creation and differentiation with an eye toward variance across the competitive set. I found this to be a Galloway-specific version of the framework I was first exposed to when I read Blue Ocean Strategy about a decade ago. After reading Blue Ocean, I used to quip, “RevZilla will be Cirque du Soleil while the rest of the industry is trying to be the best Barnum and Bailey.” Essentially, how can we invest in places that our competitors or customers are not even thinking about yet. That’s the foundation of Blue Ocean. That framing held up.
If asked I would probably define business strategy something like, “The ‘above the shoulders’ work that focuses on prioritizing tradeoffs for creating value or mitigating risk. Intentionally choosing what to do is just as important as choosing what not to do.”
In the last live class, Scott succinctly offered, “Strategy is a plan of action that produces an aim. In business, the aim’s goal is the greatest ROI utilizing a finite amount of resources.” Much simpler. Great bookend on the course. Great framework moving forward.
Conclusion – At 40 bucks an hour, this was a no-brainer for me, even considering my experience level and longtime exposure to some of the material. I wish I could have taken a class like this a decade ago. It also moved fast and was never boring. Prof G was as WYSIWYG as he always is.
For anyone earlier in their career, this would be invaluable on both what it takes for companies to win and be durable in the digital age as well as what it takes to think like an executive with regard to how you approach marshaling resources and your plan of attack.
I’d recommend this course to anyone in B2C and I’m going to tee it up for other leaders in the B2C companies I’m currently working with or have invested in.
Lastly, bridging all the way back to the beginning of this long post, I’m obviously feeling very content at the conclusion of the coursework. I was challenged to learn new things, elevate my thinking and apply what I learned. Thanks Prof G.
If you want to sign up or check out a future class visit the Section4 site.
Now, on to figuring out what today’s lesson will be…
Someone or something opted me into a daily email called Word Genius, which sends a new vocab word daily.
I like new fancy words, but like any other nonconsensual opt-in, I was initially annoyed (enraged?). Before I could unsub and shake my fist at the internet, however, I found myself opening the emails and reading the new words.. Nerdme cannot resist.
Last week they sent me the word “autodidact”, which means “a self-taught person”. I’d heard it before but was happy to have it reloaded into my working vernacular. It stuck with me over the next few days.
I, like nearly all of us, have been learning non-stop my whole life, sometimes formally from other people and school(s) and most of the time informally via everything else. When we’re young, the learning construct is forced upon us. After formal education wraps, we decide how much of the construct we want to continue on our own accord.
It’s also worth noting that I have noticed my most effective learning style is informally, by way of other people. I believe the personal and shared relevant experiences allow me to absorb and retain new concepts better than anything else. There is something about a story being shared 1-to-1 that staples the nuance and detail to my brain most effectively. Not a shocker, as I’m an extrovert who (usually) enjoys people.
Reflecting on my life as a learner, what’s even more interesting, however, is how pivotal and more broadly beneficial have been the things I’ve learned on my own, though it’s a smaller list. Some of the most sustainable joy and confidence-enhancing boosts have come from taking the more self-reliant (autodidactic) and introverted path.
A few examples:
In 1995, when I was 15, I broke my leg a month before high school started. I was laid up in a huge cast for nearly the entire fall. So with a dial-up modem and a Prodigy account, I devoured the early internet in solitude. I also bought Visual Basic 3.0 and taught myself how to write code. For a dorky teenager, this was a massive confidence boost and identity redefiner. I now had a path ahead and a domain in which to shine, by my own hand. This was also the first time in my life when I felt the satisfaction of self-mastery. It was foundational. If I could chart my own path here, what else could I explore?
For the next 2 decades, I’ve continued the path of self-study to many new and sometimes difficult pursuits. There has always been joy in improving incrementally with a side order of prove to myself I can do it on my own.
I started weight training as a 145-lb senior in high school and within a couple of years I’d added 20-25 lbs of muscle that I remain disciplined enough to still carry today. (Side note: I aspire to be Jack LaLanne when I’m 80)
I’ve always loved music and have wanted to learn to play guitar my whole life. At 19, I used some high school graduation money to buy an acoustic guitar, having never played a lick. I have had 3 lessons in 20 years, but if you throw on some Stevie Ray Vaughn, I’ll happily improvise my way up and down the fretboard. (Ask my wife about the daily concert at my house that she’s never wanted a ticket to.)
At 29, I wanted to learn how to ride a skateboard on a halfpipe (mini ramp). So I bought a cheap ramp and some pads and 10 years later I have a rad dad bag of tricks and a much bigger ramp in my back yard (sorry again, wife).
The list of personal pursuits, challenges and “hobbies” can go on and on. I think that critical broken leg as a teen and its resulting silver lining rewired me for a future of self-imposed challenges.
The last item I’d put on this list is the obvious nod to my journey at RevZilla. More specifically, my personal leadership journey and evolution from maker to manager to executive within the company lifecycle.
In a fast-growing company, everyone has to scale themself ahead of the company’s growth curve if they want to remain effective at their role. This is the most true for the founder(s) and early leadership. There are no entitlements if you expect the company to maximize its performance and continue to attract and retain the best talent. You must grow ahead of the role. You must outswim the “shark” or you get eaten (i.e., scale out).
There was a ton I learned from my team, day-to-day ops and from my biz friends and mentors. Early on, however, I decided that those would not be enough to keep me swimming fast enough.
So I stood atop the foundation of the confidence I had from figuring out other things on my own and attacked my perceived knowledge and experience gap. From about 2009 on, I read and watched everything I could get my hands on relating to leadership, management, ops, and strategy in non-stop fashion.
It was a dogged effort to expand my executive tool kit in light of the fact that I was sans MBA and really hadn’t managed anyone pre-RevZilla. It was probably the key reason I don’t think I was ever “off the clock”. The autodidact, driven by a fear of failure, had taken the wheel.
Some would say that the way I worked (obsessed?) bordered on diminishing returns, but I believe the additional inwardly focused effort contributed greatly to RevZilla’s ultimate success and my improved efficacy as a leader. The shark never got me.
Even now, as I reflect on where I have spent some my most fulfilling time in the last few years post-operations, I am somewhat surprised. Some of that time has been with new teams or companies, but many of the most satisfying moments have been solo pursuits of new skills or knowledge on my own. I didn’t think deep dives in my fortress of solitude (home office) would be as fulfilling as they continue to be. As an adultish age and lifestyle have crept closer, more unadulterated and introverted time to learn has been a surprisingly enjoyable addition.
The deep dives provide the satisfaction of figuring it out today along with a continual reassurance that I can still climb potential future mountains on my own.
I ask my children all the time, “Why do you go to school?” and when they respond with the partially correct “To learn”, I help them understand the better answer is “to learn how to learn”.
I hope they find their autodidact moments early and I hope my continuing pursuit of constructive friction makes a lasting impression on them.
To even the most extroverted extrovert I might ask a different question.
“When was the last time you climbed the mountain on your own? When was the last time you found introverted joy with the tangential benefit of elevated skill?”
Bonobos first hit my radar in 2009, when a friend participated in one of their early angel rounds. I remember him telling me that they were “solving for khaki diaper butt”. This is a problem I could not identify with as I had not worn or owned a pair of khakis since Spring 1994. They were Bugle Boy. My mom bought them, probably at Boscovs’.
The business, however, became an instant follow for me (along with Zappos at the time) as Bonobos was and still seems to be all about elevating service and customer experience. Their self-described “Ninjas” handled the customer service and experience aspect which contributed to my early thoughts on RevZilla’s “Gear Geeks”. I appreciated what their namesake primates were contributing to brand positioning, but we did choose to not fully follow down that path.
I kept an eye on them for the next few years and I even think we spent cycles working with StellaService 1.0 (Yeah, Jon and Jordy!) trying to understand more about where Bonobos placed the bar for customer interactions. I didn’t, however, know a ton about any of the founders until Andy Dunn’s blog post, “eCommerce is a Bear”, hit my radar in 2013.
The post is a bear in its own right and reads like a eulogy for the multi-brand ecom model while further crystalizing what became the Digitally Native Vertical Brand (DNVB) strategy that Bonobos was built upon.
The post opened our eyes a bit wider and is still quite relevant today. It’s worth noting that today the catch-all people use to describe businesses like this is DTC or direct-to-consumer, assuming many brands are vertical with proprietary products. Pre-2010 was not usually the case with the multi-brand non-marketplace model still humming. (For frame of reference, I think UPENN launched 400+ DNVBs in the last five years. The times, they have a-changed)
Now I’ve never met Andy, but I have continued to follow him and the brand over the last decade. I ended up with some chinos along the way (none of them are khaki) and have bought online and from their physical guide shops numerous times. I used to benchmark my perceived experiences to what we were trying to accomplish at RevZilla, online, over the phone and eventually in-store. I also developed an affinity for the brand, but I’m not sure if I loved the clothes or loved that I felt I knew the story and was part of the tribe. The clothes are nice, but not blow you away amazing so it’s probably the tribal “latter” – and that means they did their job.
Over time, I watched Bonobos grow its line, online presence and its physical footprint. They took multiple rounds of investment from Nordstrom and ultimately exited to Walmart in 2017 as part of the ongoing Jet / Lore / Milennial brands experiment. The exit was a sizeable figure (~$300m), but based on total capital raises, I’m not sure it is considered a home run for this early pioneer of DTC. I think many people, including myself, expected it to grow larger, faster. (Side note – sadly this has been the case with so many venture-backed eCom and DTC stories. They all just run out of growth eventually. Usually shy of expectations.)
As the brand and the lore (no pun intended) continued to unfold more broadly beyond the startup press, it seemed like there was a mercurial aspect to Andy’s approach that continued to be highlighted. I can’t comment on the fairness or unfairness of that positioning, but I do know a lot of founders. Being crazy enough to sign up for the job usually means that you’re used to ruffling feathers or having your “mercurial” moments. I did.
About six months ago, I happened to discover NPR’s How I Built This podcast covering Andy and Bonobos. Based on my then-current perception of who Andy may be, I was not expecting it to be as interesting as it was. I was surprised to find his take on the Bonobos journey thoughtful, introspective, grateful and notably regretful at times. The episode covered the company journey, of course, but more interestingly it dove into inner struggle, co-founder dynamics and the ultimate cost of fallout. All parts of the leadership journey, going from start-up to grownup.
The arc is often glamorized, but is more universally a humbling one. He told more of the humbling story, along with what he learned and what he got wrong, and what he could have done differently.
I appreciated that.
It’s useful for the community at large and it made me respect him enough to write about him and Bonobos today.
Fred Wilson beat me to the punch with today’s “Having Kids” post on the heels of Paul Graham’s essay “Having Kids” last week. Paul spoke to his thought process and shift in world view upon becoming a parent while Fred piggy-backed with some specific insights of his own.
Both are thoughtful and worth reading. I certainly felt them resonate with my own journey.
15 years ago I was a selfish single guy with a certain perception of kids and a lot to learn about life. I then transitioned to a still-pretty-selfish start-up guy with a young family that he spent physical time with but, sadly, was not really “present” as much as he should have been.
I find myself now the father of 5 with an oldest who’s not even a teen yet. I’m part of all of their lives and I’ve shed enough operating focus and start-up stress to actually be present and engaged. In some ways, I was always there for them and, in other ways, only in the last three years have I really been parenting them – at least in the way my wife has been and that I was lucky enough to have my mother and father parent me growing up.
It’s worth noting that I used to catch a ton of flak for using “parenting” analogies with regard to leadership and managing within my former company. Some people have strong negative emotions attached to it. I get that sensitivity although I don’t share it.
My view is that whether it’s kids or employees, the parent’s (manager) job is to care / love, define success and hold accountable while doing their best to practice what they preach. How it all goes is in many ways a reflection of the parents investment and approach to it. (Side note – board and advisory work is Grand-parenting. More on that another time).
Considering all of that, I looked back on operating RevZilla and searched my experiences for moments where through today’s more experienced parental eyes I might want a do-over.
The one area I kept coming back to was empathy.
I have always prided myself of having a strong EQ, walking the walk and building a healthy culture centered on focus, trust – and intensity.
But today when I think about one of my children working for me 5-7 years ago I cringe at times. I could have said or done certain things with more compassion. No excuses.
When early employees felt the loss of the business scaling up and becoming less personal for them, I could have been more patient or understanding as they processed it.
When early employees were unnerved and sad that they no longer reported to a founder, I could have made more of an effort to bridge the gap.
When I/we helped someone realize that they were no longer the best one to lead their team as we grew, I could have made more effort to acknowledge the pain of what that meant for them.
When someone invested all of their talent and time with a great attitude but ultimately came up short of the experience or functional demands of the job, I could have made sure they felt fully valued – even if the numbers needed something better than their best moving forward.
The list goes on…
I don’t believe I should have relaxed my standards for myself or anyone else. It still has to be a meritocracy. Time is not on your side. There are no entitlements. Every business and market opportunity has an arc. You capture it moving as fast as you can, wasting as few opportunities as possible- or you don’t. Doing something special is a tradeoff for you and for your team.
But in certain moments when people were wobbly or or flat out feeling the sting, I could have been better for them.
Being a better parent means still being objective about actual needs. It’s not catering to squeaky wheels or raising soft adults who have never skinned their knees, but it is ensuring appropriate feelings are acknowledged and met with appropriate empathy. Sometimes it just takes a moment.
It’s easy to say all of this now that I no longer have the schedule or the stress that consumed nearly all of me for the better part of a decade. How do you expend the extra energy to save someone from drowning if you’re drowning yourself? I like to think I could have dug deep and performed better on this front, but as a first-time founder, I may or may not have had it in the tank. Some days you are just trying not to look stupid in front of 100 people while behind the scenes you are thinking about keeping the biz and your marriage from cratering, simultaneously.
I think about all my kids, each with their unique talents, paths and challenges, especially as I see them growing into their own people. I see how they interact at school and at home. I see the things that they work hard at, wish for and believe in. Sometimes those things don’t come easy or may be nearly impossible, but I won’t tell them to stop.
I then imagine how they may be treated in the workforce someday.
I hope they work at companies that evaluate more than just their quantitative output. Even more, I hope they work for leaders who care as much as I did, but are more empathetic than I was in my first attempt.
In September I was asked to participate in the PACT Capital Conference “Lion’s Den”, a Shark Tank-style event in Philly. The conference bears the distinction of being the oldest and most established conference connecting VC, PE and entrepreneurs in the Northeast. (Right on, Dean Miller.)
In preparing the conference materials, they asked me for a quote for the attending entrepreneurs to accompany my bio and adult-ish headshot (lolz).
I offered:
It’s just as important to scale yourself as it is to scale your team, but remember to be strategic about it! Double down on your strengths and hire complementarily for your weaknesses – but before you do either, make sure you invest the time to really know yourself!
I’ve written a lot about personal growth, scaling myself and scaling the team in the past (here, here, here). These are the post-revenue things for a startup founder and they represented a disproportionate amount of my time at RevZilla.
Remember, we didn’t spend a ton of time or money to discover or invent a new market in moto – we set out to redefine the eCommerce experience through scalable tech and media.
Simply said, we took execution risk (vs. market risk) in launching RevZilla with the goal of becoming the “Zappos of Motorcycle gear.” We believed if we could build it without burning through all of our personal savings, we were 85% sure we’d be a leap ahead of what already existed in the industry.
So we holed up and built for six months pre-launch and within 90 days post-launch the site was cash flow positive. I have only appreciated that more and more as time has passed. Being involved in a ton of VC-backed companies these days, it feels like we skipped half the founder work of fundraising and managing investors.
BUT – we still had to execute and executing is all about the team. With that, we can bridge back to the critical “know yourself” part of my quote above. I still believe it is the foundational aspect of scaling yourself, your team and your company effectively.
“Knowing yourself” is the output of an ecosystem full of data points about you that comes from many angles and places. Some are self-serve from within, but most of the really valuable ones come from others – if they trust you and care about you enough to share.
Here are some of my learnings and maxims that helped me mine my personal ecosystem for the necessary truths needed to scale my impact, i.e. become a better leader:
React Consistently – If people trust you and feel safe, they may actually give you true feedback. If you get crickets a lot, even when you ask directly, they are scared of your reaction and what the consequences of sharing may be. If you react consistently to bad news and constructive feedback, even when you don’t agree with it, you train people to know that the messenger is never in danger. Your actions need to match the words.
I once had C-suite member offer in the most diplomatically way possible that I “at times was a hair loquacious in meetings”. If he felt safer, he would have told me, “Booch, you are sucking the air out of the room in meetings and it may be impacting the ability to have the most valuable and fully participated conversations”. And he probably would have told me 6 months before I formally asked, as well. Also if he didn’t feel safe offering it to me even when I asked, there is no way more junior folks felt safe enough to offer suggestions for ways I might support them better. I was happy I learned this lesson when I did, but wished I had learned it years earlier. From there on, I consciously worked to be more predictable. If they know you will react in a safe manner, even to rough or personal news, you may be surprised in how useful the things you start hearing will be.
Feedback is a Gift – Now that people hopefully trust that you will react reasonably, continue to ask for and show gratitude for feedback. Seek it constantly – informally and formally – from individuals, small group settings and in your town halls, if possible. When people care enough about you to share how you could improve, they are spending cycles for you and sticking their neck out on some level. Never forget to thank them for it and reinforce your appreciation.
I read once that the only good direct response to any piece of feedback from a peer or subordinate should be “thank you so much for telling me that”. You can always follow up for more clarity and texture later, but in the moment when folks are uneasy about your potential reaction, put the person who’s sharing back at ease. Reward and reinforce their effort to help you and the organization improve and train them to do more of it in the future. Wanna bet they tell their co-workers how you reacted? You have just modeled great behavior that could affect their managerial interactions downstream, as well.
Feedback is a Gift Part 2: No Real-Time Examples – You have now offered immediate gratitude to the party who has attempted to help you, right? From there you can talk about a lot of related things, problem-solve together and you can certainly hope that the sharing party gives you some specific examples backing up their perceptions right then and there. In my experience, the odds are low that you’ll get specific examples with the initial feedback. Sometimes you’ll get full texture from more experienced and comfortable feedback givers which I’d consider a bonus. But, no matter how flimsy or concrete the sentiment being shared, you never get to ask for examples in that meeting. In the sharing context, asking for examples is the equivalent of saying “I won’t believe you unless you prove it right now” and it supports the fear / consequences aspect of speaking truth to power.
As I mentioned earlier, you can always find a moment in your next interaction to get the extra clarity you need, but the patience not to ask immediately will reinforce the feedback loop and eliminate future fear. Sidenote – Conversely if you are sharing any negative feedback or area for improvement with anyone you should ALWAYS have multiple examples to create as much clarity in the moment, as possible. Take the guesswork out where you can. Highlight the cost element being addressed.
Feedback is a Gift 3: Advertise your Plan – After you have processed the feedback, gotten any additional clarity and potentially thought through how to change your approach in the future, advertise your new approach to the person brave enough to have shared the feedback with you originally. Remind them that you appreciated it, and showcase that you heard them and that you found value in their opinion. The ultimate testament is actually modifying your behavior when future opportunities present themselves.
Leverage the Friday 5:15 – The “5:15” is a weekly “post” shared with you by someone you manage within a document that they own. It’s not a progress report, it’s another scalable feedback loop to be used in supporting the individuals on your team. Generally, it’s completed every Friday by 5:15. It should take a staff member 15 minutes to write and five minutes for you to read.
Done well, it’s short and specific, giving you a sense of where your teammate’s head is at as they wrap up the week along with highlighting anything new they may need from you ahead of their next 1o1. My promise was that I’d have read and potentially commented back by Monday at 9am, so long as they were completed on time. At RevZilla we tested these in the exec ranks and found them valuable enough to be rolled out company-wide. There is more to the concept and you can find a broader article and my podcast discussion on the topic here. In my eyes, a scalable tool supporting servant leadership from a schedule perpetually under fire.
Share Your Defaults and Preferences – I’m a D9I8S1C5 on the DISC profile. I’m an ENTJ/P in the Meyers Briggs matrix. I’m a Challenger-Enthusiast (8/7) on the Enneagram spectrum. I prefer collaborative problem solving and I would prefer bad news delivered in person during specific work blocks vs. via electronic means. I have even more communication preferences on a number of common scenarios as well.
During my career, I have shared my information in a mixture of places but never pulled it all together. I’ve seen others who I respect collect and build a 1-2 page “Operating Manual” with all relevant preferences and links. They then shared their personality, work and communication styles manual with their team in an effort to help them find more success and consistency in their interactions.
Next time, I will centralize my data and share it via the extended “operating manual” approach. If (when) I received feedback that the team found the document valuable, I’d then ask them to create a manual for their respective teams and I’d look to be shared on it, as well. As a manager, I obviously try to use all the tools at my disposal to understand my people.
It’s worth noting that some folks don’t put much stock in personality profiling. In my view, a personality profile is just another framework for simplifying a person’s inherent needs and patterns that affect communication style, which is the true productivity unlock here.
Avoid the Vacuum – The climb is way harder alone. Find other climbers. Get out of your office and invest in building your network of folks who sit in a similar seat, at a similar stage of company or personal life. Compare notes on the self-development journey. Their perspectives may help highlight things you have not already thought about, along with identifying red herrings or shortcuts to less obvious solves. This one is so trite, but I see so many founders who live in their own echo chambers or, worse, celebrate not playing well with others.
Find Grey Hair Who Can’t Fire You – This is in the same vein as the last bullet, but rather than peers, find a mentor or an exec coach. I’ve written about it before, but you need to discuss what scares the hell out of you with someone you’re not married to and who is not on your cap table or payroll. Even more importantly, that person should know you and care enough about you to be able to call bullsh*t when needed and without fear of repercussion. When you have someone in your corner who sees enough of your patterns and has a non-financial stake in your outcomes, they can force intellectual honesty and, hopefully, highlight additional blind spots for you to work on.
You can always be better. More effective, more supportive, more introspective, more efficient. Don’t ever let yourself, your management style or your approach to leadership be “done”. Grind your way to excellent.
Make sure that you are getting strong regular signals from your feedback loops and personal ecosystem that you can act on. Make it part of your management framework. Share your approach with your team and help them make it part of theirs.
Think about the compounding effect if all of your managers and leaders got better at scaling themselves and their leadership by only 5% each year. Think about what it might look like if the output of the effort were that your company improved all its KPIs by 5%. #mindblown
As I said, feedback is a valuable gift at the foundation of scaling success on all fronts.
