This is now the second time I’ve stayed at Casa Polanco in Mexico City in nine months.
And I honestly don’t know if I keep going back because I love Mexico City, or because every single time I stay at this hotel, I walk away so inspired to be better for my clients because of how my family is treated and thought of.
And then I’m sitting there thinking: how do I take care of my clients the way they just took care of me?
I’ve only been there twice, but it’s the same people both times. And here’s why that matters more than ever right now: in a world of personalized emails and CRMs, personalization has started to feel inauthentic.
It doesn’t feel real, it doesn’t feel honest. Everybody’s radar is up for it now. So when a person you don’t actually know or recognize suddenly “knows” you, it feels weird, it’s the same reason so many people who prep for a call with me will drop in these little personal details they clearly looked up, and it just doesn’t land. It’s like, you don’t know me like that.
One of the things I think has been critical to our “growth” is that we’ve concentrated our client relationships around the team with our highest retention, our client engagement team.
Deep down a client wants access to the nerds, like me. But they want to know the nerd isn’t going to geek out so hard on the newest algorithm update that they forget the whole point is growing a business.
That’s Seer’s attempt of having the same person greeting you every time, they get to know you in an authentic way.
The “CE team” has a job and that job is making sure the relationship never gets lost in the work, the deliverables, the reports.
There are so many small things they do that are otherworldly to me.
The Mini Bar Stress Out
“Take whatever you want, whenever you want, we’ll refill it and anything in your mini bar.”
The real thing they’ve done is make it easy for people to enjoy without thinking.
So often at a hotel you’re sitting there doing math in your head, I’m not paying six bucks for this Coke, and $10 for a bag of popcorn.
The ask of money is friction. How can you say, unwind and relax, we’re here for you, and then be like “yo $10 bux for that fiji dog?”
They just remove all of that, that thinking and convincing yourself.
The small things are big things lesson at 7:30am
The picture above was taken at 7:30am, after a run. Look at the ice cube bucket, it is completely full. I’m looking at it thinking: this hotel is checking that the ice in an open bar hasn’t melted at 7:30am. That ice is going to melt in an hour or two regardless. Didn’t matter to them.
If someone wanted a drink at 7:30am, they shouldn’t have to ask for ice.
What’s the equivalent test at Seer, the thing I’d want our people doing for a client even in the moments where the client would genuinely never know either way?
Will Guidara writes about something similar in Unreasonable Hospitality the host would spot a table paying their check and quietly send someone to move their coats up to the front, so by the time the table finished paying, their coats were already waiting by the door.
He called it a magic trick. Nobody asks for that. Most people don’t even notice it’s happening, they just pat their pockets for the coat check tag, look up, and their coat is already there. That’s the same instinct as the ice tray. Nobody’s watching. Do it anyway. How do I build that?
Cleaning a room, nope, Wolverine battle
When they cleaned the room, they took my kids’ action figures and set them up in battle positions around the room. It was wild that they took that kind of care while cleaning sitting his little army men up in different poses.
And since it was one of my kid’s birthdays, they’d found a piñata that day and attached it to a balloon for him. They’d just found out.
I keep coming back to this through the lens of how it makes me want to be better for my clients. It really does. When you feel like somebody is taking care of you at that level, you can’t help but want to be that for the people you work with.
Making Mistakes in client relationships
There’s a book I love called Setting the Table by Danny Meyer, and one line from it has stuck with me for years:
The road to success is paved with mistakes well handled.
It’s not that Polanco doesn’t make mistakes. It’s not that Fasano doesn’t make mistakes. It’s that when they do, they handle them well, and they hold themselves to a standard to keep it from happening again.
When Seer drops the ball with a client , and every agency does , what would “handling it well” actually look like if we were holding ourselves to a Polanco-level standard, rather than just an apologetic-email standard?
Danny Meyer has another thought from that book: write the best final chapter. Your client can leave, you can make mistakes, but you always have a chance to write a great final chapter.
Mistakes are going to happen. The question is how you write the final chapter.
I’m in the middle of writing one right now. An alum of Seer hired our company to help their new company, and for whatever reason, we didn’t live up to the standard they needed from us.
I emailed them and said: I don’t know if you remember the book I shared with you when you were here, Setting the Table, but in it, Danny Meyer reminds us to write a great final chapter. That’s what I’m going to do. Even though you’ve executed your out clause, I’ll make myself available to help you or your executive team in any way possible. Because that’s just what we do.
Watching us leave
It reminds me of leaving Casa Polanco. When you get into the car to drive off, one or two staff members typically wait outside watching you and your family until you turn the corner and are out of their sight.
They keep an eye on you until you’re no longer in view, looking for one more chance in case you need help.
Forgot something? They see you out until they no longer can directly influence the quality of your stay. That is what i want to build.
Not the biggest, not the most profitable, the one that made people feel like you know what…this was personal to Wil and his team at Seer.
Shout out to Dan Mall. I asked him last week, to shoot holes through some of my thoughts on the argument about the environmental impact of AI vs our personal usage of things that are bad for the environment.
I whined “Isn’t it interesting how we want ChatGPT to “change” a company we don’t control. Yet we’ll swear by almond milk and eat hamburgers without thinking twice.”
He said:
“You need to be more upfront about what you actually think about AI and the environment, exact quote “you are the dang leader, tell the team what is in bounds and out of bounds”.
I got tired of the argument, so I went and looked at myself first
We’re a B-Corp. So my company should be asking me tough questions as the environment is a stakeholder. But something about it kept bugging me, and it took me a while to name it.
We hold AI to a standard of scrutiny we do not hold ourselves to.
Not one person in the company has ever said, hey wil, I care so much about the environment that I want you to show me your flights and your impact on the environment and discuss what we’re going to do about that.
Most real change starts with looking at yourself, and if I’m going to ask people to bring me data, I’d better show up with my fucking own.
Have you ever compared your AI usage vs your travel impact? It’s brutal.
01 Start with me
I flew 70k miles last year. Mostly in business class.
Forty-one segments between August 2025 and August 2026 — roughly 2.8 times around the Earth. Brazil twice, Munich, London, Mexico City, Oaxaca, and a dozen domestic hops. (Claude analyzed my calendar this could be off).
43.6 t
CO₂e — one year of my flying
22.6 t
If I’d flown economy the whole way. This is the floor.
43.6 t
Adjusted for the seats I actually sat in.
87.1 t
Including contrails and NOx at altitude,
14–16 t
The average American’s footprint, all sources. My flying alone is about triple it.
Now the AI number, done honestly
There’s a number floating around that says a median AI prompt uses about 0.24 watt-hours. It’s a real measured figure from Google.
I modeled the expensive version: the IEA’s 2026 estimate for an agentic request with reasoning, which is about 50 Wh a pop — roughly 200× the chatbot median.
Two hundred heavy reasoning runs a day. Every single day. For a year. That’s about 1,350 kg of CO₂e.
Which is 3.1% of my flying.
To offset one year of my flying with AI, I’d have to kick off a heavy reasoning run every 4.5 seconds — every working second of every working day, for a full year.
AI usage is growing fast, which is exactly why it’s fair to examine todays multiples by this aggressive growth rate. But my personal AI use, run harder than almost anyone at Seer runs it, is a rounding error next to how much I fly.
Right-size your model usage.
Sonny recently posted internally that using a more efficient model could have an impact on our usage and I was like we should do that.
What if I used a smaller model?
Shifting 20% of my agentic work from Opus to Haiku saves 264 kg a year. That’s slightly more than my July round trip to Boston.
Almonds, hamburgers, golf courses, and pools
This is where my head really went, data, always and it started with water, ok if we care so much about water usage….
One almond takes about 3.2 liters of water to grow.
One quarter-pound beef burger: about 1,700 liters.
One simple AI prompt: 0.26 milliliters. Five drops.
Then I went to Arizona, because Arizona is a desert and they got tons of golf courses and pools (used deep research).
Use
Annual water
vs. data centers
All Arizona data centers (2025)
0.9 billion gal
~505,000 residential pools
~8.1 billion gal
~9×
Golf courses, Phoenix AMA alone (174 courses)
~32.4 billion gal
~36×
Pools + golf combined
~40.5 billion gal
~45×
Agriculture, statewide
>70% of all AZ water
~1,700×
Statewide, about 74% of Arizona golf water is potable. In the Phoenix AMA only 21% is reclaimed. Phoenix golf on drinking water alone is roughly 28× every data center in the state.
Don’t you take away my pool…
Arizona has around 505,000 residential pools — one for every 13 residents, more per capita than any state in the country.
We built half a million private pools in a desert without a single public meeting about it. Nobody called that an environmental crisis. Something else is at play here, AI is striking a chord that I think all of us need to dig in on. Why THIS and never THAT?
Wil, what is “in bounds” at Seer?
Everything above is research. This next part is the thing Dan wouldn’t let me leave out, and it’s the reason this post exists.
My number one job is keeping people employed. That’s it. That is the top of my list and nothing is close to it.
There are roughly 180 people whose mortgages and tuition payments and health insurance run through this company.
We’re operating in a market where organic traffic is falling off a cliff and the entire mechanism by which people discover brands is being rewritten in real time.
If Seer isn’t leaned all the way into AI, we don’t get to have a values conversation at all, because we won’t be here to have it.
So the environment sits lower on my priority list than winning as a company. Not because it isn’t something I want to work on and fix. Because I can’t make it my driving force and still do the first job.
I’d rather say that plainly than let people assume I secretly hold it as priority one and just never act on it. Dan’s point was that my team deserves to know the real order, even if they don’t like it.
So here’s exactly what I will and won’t do as of today.
What I believe
We hold AI to a scrutiny standard we don’t apply to our own choices. Business-class flights, vacations, pools, dogs, burgers, almond milk — all bigger, all mostly unquestioned.
AI’s footprint is growing fast, so it’s fair to examine. What bothers me is examining it while ignoring our own.
Data center water use in Arizona is genuinely a problem. Golf courses are a much bigger one and get almost zero protest.
Most change starts with looking at yourself before you point at anybody else.
Right-sizing models from Opus to Haiku where it fits is worth doing — real savings, no loss of capability. Just don’t sell it as a climate program.
Individual, voluntary evals are the actual lever. Taylor moved a chunk of work from reasoning calls to static SQL queries — had the idea, tested it, proved it, shipped it, without being asked. That’s the model.
What I’m willing to do
Fund an intern to work on this, on Seer’s time and with Seer’s money.
Share Seer’s own data publicly and with government orgs so other companies can learn from what we find.
Use my connections to push this work forward.
Build the internal infrastructure so people can run real evals – Haiku vs. Opus, local models, etc
Back anyone who wants to spend their spare pockets of time on efficient model environmental impact evals.
Support anybody who tests an idea on their own initiative and brings the data back.
What I’m not willing to do
Personally implement other people’s ideas. I care enough to look at myself, do the research, fund interns and test my own usage. If you got an idea, you gotta care enough to work with me but not assume I’m going to do it.
Carve out extra paid time specifically for this work (outside of the intern)
Change my travel
Let this become the priority. The priority is survive and thrive at this time, so we can live into our values – win for our clients, so we can win for our co-workers, so we can win for our community. In that order.
FYI this post is about 40% written by AI, as it was research heavy. I spent 3 hours talking to Claude, sharing my ideas getting pushback, pushing it back, reading it outputs. Then I recorded a video for the team of my thoughts, and had claude read that transcript + all of our chats and help write a draft, and with my new wordpress MCP connector it pushed the draft right in.
The job to be done with any post is to think, and share not to “avoid em dashes”. So If you seen an em dash, in the immortal words of DMX…get at me dog, I’m ready.
Method. Flights: 41 calendar segments, Aug 2025 – Aug 2026, great-circle distances, 0.255 kg CO₂/passenger-km under 1,500 km and 0.195 above, business multiplier 2.5× long-haul and 1.5× short-haul based on booked seats. AI: IEA 2026 estimates of 50 Wh for an agentic request with reasoning and 1.1 Wh for a standard agent request; 0.37 kg CO₂e/kWh US average grid. Excludes training amortization, device energy, and non-agentic chat — all of which push the AI number up, not down. One acre-foot = 325,851 gallons.
Sources. IEA, Key Questions on Energy and AI (2026) · Our World in Data / Hannah Ritchie (2026) · Google Cloud, AI inference measurement paper (2025) · Bluefield Research via Circle of Blue · Ceres via Grist · ADWR and University of Arizona golf water studies · WRRC Phoenix AMA data · Arizona State Law Journal on allotment overages · KOLD Fact Finders on per-person pool water · US Bureau of Reclamation 2026 Level 1 Shortage declaration.
TL:DR — I donated more absolute dollars year over year and less relative dollars given the growth of my portfolio. I was kinda pissed at myself.
Check the discrepancy between the two you might find what I found, on an absolute basis I was more charitable, on a relative basis I was less. You might be like me, but you gotta be willing to look at the numbers to find out.
Here are two posts that will help you understand more about my relationship with money.
Every year my financial adviser comes over and we go through my portfolio. They show me the charts. The numbers. The gains. We talk about what worked, what didn’t, where things are headed. High fives all around.
This year I had a feeling, that while I was “giving more” that relative to my gains it was a joke. So I asked them to pull up something else: my charitable giving from my donor-advised fund over the same period.
And there it was. Confirmed, I was giving more in absolute dollars and less in relative.
The Math Wasn’t Mathing
For years, my portfolio had been growing. Compounding. Doing what portfolios do when you leave them alone and the market cooperates.
Meanwhile, my charitable giving was growing too. I’d gone from giving what felt like meaningful amounts to giving even more. The absolute numbers were going up by thousands. I felt good about that. (This is separate from what the company gives away).
In the years before 2025, I was giving away somewhere between 2–4% of my annual portfolio gains. Some years a bit more, some years a bit less.
My returns were compounding exponentially. My generosity was growing linearly.
I Love a Good Scoreboard
Here’s the thing about me. I love winning, losing. I love outperforming, underperforming.
I love being better than I was yesterday. Give me a scoreboard and I will find a way to move the numbers.
And portfolio returns? Perfect scoreboard. Clean. Quantifiable. Always there on the app whenever you want to check it.
But without an offsetting metric (charitable donations) – without something to balance against those returns, you end up on the treadmill of life.
How Did I Become That Person?
I dind’t grow up with a lot of “extra” money…
So the me who grew up lower middle class, is so engrained in the me of today, that giving 100 dollars still feels like a TON, because old me is still in there.
Holding the mirror up to myself…
I asked for a specific report. Portfolio gains for the year. Charitable giving for the year. Side by side. As percentages.
I went up from 2023 to 2024 in charitable givingBut as a percentage of my gains I went down
And look what happened, by asking the question and looking at the numbers I knew what to do.
This year I gave away 20% of my returns. I think that sounds right and will continue to do that, it is a good counterbalance to that lower middle class kid at the private school who just can’t sort this out.
I finally have a system that keeps me honest with myself about how old me (writing a 100 dollar check to a charity) doesn’t serve the new me (that 100 dollar check should have been 1000).
If my returns compound, my giving needs to compound at a similar rate. 20% it is.
It’s not about giving all my returns away. It’s about having a metric that keeps me honest about the “enough” I claimed I already reached.
Big ups to Professor Galloway who talked about hitting a number then saying once he hit it, everything above that had to go to charity or to making memories for other people. I love that idea and it inspired the self reflections I had that made me even hold the mirror up to myself.
So I got the call no one wants to get … son… I think your mom is dead.
I got in the car, left the kids sleeping, hit auto-pilot and got taken from my house in Philly at 10pm to my parents house.
There was a police car out front, the front door I entered and exited my whole life was open and I was scared but prepared for what I was likely about to see.
I ran in, and there she was, mom on the floor of the living room. A breathing tube in her mouth, body covered, but you could see her bra was cut. The EMTs weren't there anymore, but the evidence of their presence was. A few small pieces left behind from the devices they used to try to bring mom back, unsuccessfully.
The cop was there, my dads first words to me (and I kid you not) were… He’s here to make sure we don’t touch the body as we wait for them to tell us it wasn’t a homicide.
Not: My goodness what am I going to do, Wil? But thats my dad.
99% of you will read that and think, your dad was in a state of shock, and that might be true, but also maybe he wasn’t.
My dad told me later that night… I wouldn’t cry if you died, son.
He went on to explain…his mother had told him to prepare for her to die, since he was young, he saw her light herself on fire once after saying it. To cope or survive maybe he just had to callous that part of himself over.
See my dad has been preparing for people he loved to leave him since he was 14, and I’ve now realized I was too, and I started earlier.
It is why people expect me to be upset, they expect me to not be able to function, they expect that “It’ll hit me later” they’ll be surprised when it doesn’t.
I’ve been preparing for death most of my life, I remind myself of those deaths coming, and it shapes my entire way of living life.
Maybe the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree after all.
What kind of son was I?
The only question I wanted to answer was that one. I wanted ZERO people to call me, text me, talk to me.
I didn’t want to hear…
“She was proud”
“She was talking to me about all you accomplished”
“She loved how you volunteer”
Nope I wanted none of that shit, I went in a hole for 48–56 hours, just me and her things.
I’ve read Mistakes were Made but not by me, I know it is going to be my default state to self justify being a good son that’s why I wanted no outside influence.
Day 1 on this planet without my mom
The next morning, or should I say same day, I got up at 9am and drove over. I started going through moms things. We needed to clean up the house, I wanted to take care of dad too. This was his ride or die for 55+ years. I got to the house, he was sleep still, I cracked the door to see if he was breathing (that is where my mindset was) and he was.
So I got my coffee, and started doing my part, going through her things.
My mom was meticulous with notes, calendars, organization etc. I knew someone was going to have to go through all this stuff and I wanted to do my part. Also I had my kiddos solo as Nora was in Nicaragua for 9 days or so, so I had to get back to the house by 2pm.
I just sorted and sorted and sorted. Bills, Old bills, really old bills, insurance paperwork, bank accounts, thank you cards, doctors appointments, medical records, etc.
Then it hit me, if I can scan these as PDFs I can store them in a shared family drive. Well I discovered this great feature of Google Drive.
The Book: HumanKind
As I sorted I took breaks to read the thank you cards, and then I came across my own card written 5 years ago on company thank you cards, we’ve always been a thank you card culture, I established that early.
Funny enough one of the 5 books on her coffee table was Humankind, when I entered the house for some reason I noticed it, only feet from her lifeless body, a book I have bought a hundred copies of, a book we gave to every mother on mothers day this year, a book that will inspire you to do small things on how can we be better humans to each other, written by my buddy Brad Aronson who highlighted this about our culture. I stil have a few copies for Kindle if you can’t afford one.
All of us will look over a body at some point and ask ourselves was I the best person I could be to THIS person?
Reflection 1: Gentle nudges, we’re influencing our kids in ways we have no idea for good and bad…
You will question in times like these “Did I tell this person how I felt?” and you’ll likely self justify that you did. It brought me comfort to read the thank you cards I had sent my mom dating back 10 years, the most recent one was July 1 2025. That comforted me, I didn’t catch Jesus once and sent her a thank you note, I did it, and kept doing it over the years.
What kind of son was I to this person who is no longer here?
I found my thank you cards to her where I poured my heart out to her telling her how much I appreciated her and her sacrifices to raise me, I sent them from Philly, from San Diego, and this year I had sent them from Morocco and from Iguazu Falls in Brazil. I could hold them, I could read the words, I could see she kept those cards. I didn’t have to assume I told her how I felt, I didn’t have to ask when is the last time I told her, I could see it, that provided comfort. I had the artifacts.
Maybe I was a good son.
Reflection 2: Learning about myself & how my mom influenced how I built Seer’s culture
Anyone who worked or works at Seer knows I bring an intensity about trying to be great, I’ve written about this before and my mom’s impact. So the intensity, the “so what if you are black, work harder” parts I’ve talked about are there.
But this process helped me to realize she was my roots in the most important parts of what I’ve done at Seer.
At Seer thank you cards were huge (I say were because being remote has destroyed this part of our culture). They were everywhere — all this time I thought I just “came up with this idea on my own” but when I saw the amount of blank cards my mom had to write thank you notes, I reflected. This was something she always did, even in her toughest moments, she always wrote thank you cards, I had done the same, and I had brought this into my company.
Her passing helped me to understand that while she never “made” me write thank you notes, I must have just seen her doing it over and over and over again to the point where at some point in my life, I started doing the same in my mid 20’s as I built Seer, writing thank you notes to people at the company. I wanted people to spread a little joy to each other, I wanted to build a company where the company offered nudges to be a better human and bring joy in small doses to clients.
I also went through her checkbook, trying to find the bills she was paying so I could help my dad, both financially but also just logistically, this man doesn’t know how to write checks (I thought).
In going through her checkbook, I saw the charities she donated to monthly: Ronald McDonald house, Shriner Hospital for Kids, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, St. Judes Hospital for Children.
She wrote the checks, every month, by hand, I saw her balance and I saw how much she was donating, it was humbling.
Then I reflected, where did this sense of community impact, and putting volunteerism at the core of the company come from? My mom never “made” me volunteer, or donate, she never nudged me to do it. Yet I must have seen it as a kid, remember I’m 49 years old, I haven’t lived in that house for 31 years, yet when I started my company the catalyst came from me volunteering at CHOP playing with sick kids, I wanted to do more of that, I wanted to work somewhere that would let me volunteer my tail off and also kick ass at work. It was hard to find a company like that so I built one.
Mom was the foundation of two of the things I am most proud of about Seer.
1 — If I’m going to run a company, I want to make it a place that when people work there that makes their moms proud
2 — If I’m going to run a company, I want to make it a place that tries to nudge you to be a better human, by surrounding you with other kind, good, kick ass people, who care about their communities and put in the work.
What kind of son was I to this person who is no longer here?
Building a company definitely made my mom proud, but I think it is HOW I built that company that makes her super proud. I was aligned with her without even knowing it. We were both writing checks, putting in time, and writing copious thank you cards to people who impacted our lives.
I travel with thank you cards in my bag, I even kept the old stamp sheets during the pandemic to make sure I was sending out cards to team members the same way.
Writing thank you notes on a flight
I will be keeping and using my moms random stack of blank thank you cards to send out even more, so look out for them.
Maybe I was a good to her.
Reflection 3: The big cry revealed how it was always important to make my mom proud
I asked Crystal to message the company, and tell them to kinda leave me alone, I didn’t want any messages I didn’t want any interruptions to the journey I was on, I wanted to put myself through the ringer to answer this question, I wanted to be tough on myself, and I didn’t want the outside world impacting that brain space, telling me how good I was and biasing me more than my natural human inclination to not want to admit I could have been a better son to my mom, who had just passed away.
The idea that I wanted to build a company where if you worked there, and your parents google’d us, they’d think…this sounds like a place that will care about my kid and help them continue to be someone I’m proud of.
This is the message she sent:
Hi Everyone,
On behalf of Wil and his family, I’m deeply saddened to share the news of the unexpected passing of his mother, Elizabeth (“Liz”) Reynolds. As Wil and his family support one another and process life without their loved one, expect Neal to reschedule meetings and events as needed, and for Wil to be in and out over the next few weeks. Please reach out to Neal or myself for anything you might need.
Liz is hands down one of the most wonderful humans to ever be part of Seer’s story. She was the original inspiration that drove so many of Seer’s favorite traditions over the years from the “Make your momma proud” concept on our early Seer website featuring our baby pictures, to the flowers our mother figures receive on Mother’s Day. In Seer’s early days, she would often lend a hand around the office, helping with checks, contracts, filing… anything needed. Her warmth, love, and support helped shape the heart of this company.
We know many of you will want to reach out to support Wil and his family and he’s deeply grateful for that.
Here’s what we ask at this time: Please do not reach out directly to Wil or comment on this thread. Let’s give him and his family the privacy and space they need to grieve together.
If you’d like to show your support, you’re welcome to leave an emoji reaction on this message.
Let’s continue to make Wil’s momma Liz proud by showing up for our clients, our community, and each other — living the values she inspired in Wil, Seer and all who had the privilege to know her.
I read this at my kitchen table, as I was putting out plates for my kids dinner (remember nora was in Nicaragua and trying to get home), and I burst into tears mid sentence with my kids. I mean all out cry.
Crystal posted this picture too, and I zoomed in on the make your momma proud part. This image is from out OLD OLD website. But there it was I’ve been trying to make my mom proud, and other team members moms (and dads) proud since the beginning. I hadn’t reflected on how I weaved that into the website so early on, from banners for hiring to our web page.
The old Seer Interactive “about us” page
God I remember those baby pics…imagine starting a job and one of your requirements is to get a baby pic, often times you gotta hit up your parents to get them, and they are going to ask why — and they get to share with them a small moment of who this company is, and we get to bring a little joy to their parents, what parent doesn’t love an excuse to go through old baby photos and take a walk down memory lane? The way we built this company nudged that opportunity. You better believe it also lead to a few emails with parents that I got to connect with over the years…fuck a professional headshot, lets bring back our baby pictures.
We still have some left over banners on our current site, but this was our recruiting tagline, and my true north.
Making more money doesn’t make your mom proud — I already said this much…
In this article on my “success” I said: “I want to make my mom proud,” … “Is she any more proud of me with a company worth 100 million or 300 million? No.”
So many of us professionals keep chasing $$ as the metric to success, and we think that financial success will make our parents proud, but for me, I knew that going from 5 million to 10 from 10 to 20, and 20 to 30, never really increased my moms pride in me. If anything it is that as the company grew so did our impact on people in our community, our donations, etc.
The reality of growing any business like that is that while it makes your family proud it also takes you away from them.
I wrote about that here and what I do to try to limit it, because business growth can unintentionally creep up on removing you from your family.
Also every new employee at Seer sits with me to talk about how and why I started this company, the first slide in the deck is a pic of my mom. I had her in the bedrock since the beginning.
What kind of son was I to this person who is no longer here?
It isn’t typical for slide 1 in a company about us presentation to be the CEOs mom, just even the process of giving her those “flowers” every month to my team, sparked a reminder in me to call her, thank her, tell her how much she mattered to me, because I was telling others too. The intentionality I had around making my mom proud, made me feel good, it gave me another set of artifacts to reflect on. When I gave the “seer onboarding chat” with our interns 80 hours after her death it was hard to get through, but I went through with it and got through some tears, but I will continue to tell every new person at Seer who she was to me, keeping her memory alive and questioning am I still making her proud.
Reflection 4: Making her proud 3x in the 24 hours before her passing
I started feeling ok about myself as I reflected on how was I living my life 24 hours before she passed and if she knew what I was doing would she have been proud of me?
Part A: We talked the night before
I was in a NYC hotel with my kiddos when the phone rang, it was mom, I picked up…
I wasn’t a “talk on the phone with mom” guy, but I did from time to time, every couple weeks or so, and this time we talked the night before, let me tell you why.
When I was 10 my friend Nigel died of cancer, and when I was 14 my friend Carl died of a drowning. Like my dad, I knew life was fragile at an early age.
When I go on runs, I often reflect and ask myself
What would you do differently if someone told you today that you would die in 10 years, then I cut it to 5, then 3, then 2, then 1, then 6 months, then 3 months.
The idea is simple, anything I come up with I should do today / soon because tomorrow isn’t promised.
Heck even for a blog post I’m like, I must get it out, in case I pass away. It’s deeply ingrained.
I recently realized how their deaths impacted how I live my life, and I asked my mom to do some detective work and find their parents names and numbers, and their sisters / brothers so I can call them and tell them how 39 years later, how their sons / brothers passing impacted me and how it helps me value life, they should hear that because I bet you they don’t. I thought it might bring some relief, joy, or something to know I never forgot and I think about them often and while we couuldn’t keep them here, I used their passing at a young age to make me a better father, husband, son, etc.
I reflected on what I was doing and thought…imagine if one of my kiddos lost a friend at a young age and one day called me up and asked me to help them find that person’s parents to say thank you and let them know what I said above, how would I feel about my kids doing that? I instantly knew … insanely proud.
Part B: Fun with my boys
Nora was in Nicaragua, I had the kids solo for 9 days, the weekend would be a time to catch up on all the work I couldn’t get to during the week, get them some pizza and tablets and give me 5 hours to play catch up. NOPE.
I took the kids ot NYC we went to the spy museum and did the spy games, it was SOOOO much fun. We went to the Nintendo store and the Lego store. We went around NYC for 1 day and then head home.
She never got to see her son and her husband have those moments, she was the only person to provide those. Now why would this make my mom proud? I broke the cycle.
First, my dad never spent time with me like this, he worked, he provided, but the idea of spending time with me when I was this age was non existent. My dad met his dad for the first time when he was 16, and only 5–6 times after that.
Here I am having legit tons of fun, sending her pictures of the fun we’re having, and she could sit back in her chair and think… my son actually makes time for his kids but also looks like he thoroughly enjoys these boys.
Part C: I had the chance to see my mom 4 hours before she died and I decided not to
Leaving NYC to go home, get caught up on work… Nope… it was an opportunity. My uncle (her brother) just moved into a new place, he was proud of it. It was 2 hours and 20 minutes from my hotel in NYC, I put it in the GPS and headed to his new place with the boys to watch the eagles game with him and enjoy his company. I could have watched the eagles game with her, drove a LOT less that day, I would have left the house around 5pm and she passed around 9pm.
I chose to go see her brother, I wouldn’t be prioritizing getting out there to his place that often because it was far away, and his place was new and he wanted to share the new place with people.
My mom also wanted me to have relationships with her brothers and sisters, whether or not I did is a different story.
I stack rank people in my life, so that when I run out of time, I know I spent it with the people highest up, cause it is just a reality…we run out of time for all the people in our lives.
Nora, the kids, my mom, etc — eventually we all just run out of time to be everything to everyone in every role we play.
Anyways, I spent time with my uncle instead of my mom, but I spent time with someone who just lost their spouse a few months ago (my uncle) and it was someone in our family… my mom would have wanted that, he was on his own — and guests brought him joy, and I love spending time with him talking smack on text about the eagles, why not do it in person w/ the kiddos?
Little would I know, just a few hours, her time would be expiring.
The wrap up
Only we know the times when we could have shown up for our loved ones and didn’t, the times we could have helped them but didn’t, we don’t post those things publicly, but those are the exact things that we carry with us when they pass that leads to a lot of regret. When’s the last time someone wrote about skipping time with mom on social? Right.
That’s why I went in a hole for 2.5 days, being tough on myself… would my mom have wanted me to swing by her house for a visit 2x a month yup, some months I did and other times I went 2 months without seeing her, that is why I wanted this time to reflect on if I was the son I wanted to be, and it was these last 24 hours before her passing, the thank you cards, and other small steps that help me to realize yeah, I am at peace with this.
If there was anything I could bestow on you that is helping me through this time its these things:
1 — Think about your death and the death of others often, ask yourself if you are being the person you want to be, if no…change things.
2 — Leave artifacts, it helps you to know what you said to someone, not just what you think you said
3 — Define what success looks like to you in every role you play, what is acceptable to you. Don’t let others define what being a good husband, son, father, uncle, etc means, instead do the work, define it for yourself and reflect on if you are or are not.
I had decided if I came out of this feeling like I wasn’t the son I wanted to be (on the macro), that it would spark me to be better for the people who are still here with me, and that would be the best last lesson mom would have helped me learn.
I’ll miss you mom, I miss having someone to text when the sixers and eagles play. I wish I could text you now, cause they BLEW THAT LEAD against the bulls last night, but I’ll text your 2 remaining sibs on that.
Addendum / the role AI played in this process.
When you have a parent who passes away, the more time you spend on logistics the less time you have to sit with your thoughts and memories, and cry your way through blog posts.
It was AI that trained the tesla that got me to the house at a tough time.
Autopilot keeps people safe. Driving somewhere to see a loved one who might be dead is something we all will go through.
Driving at times like these is rife with blurry eyes from the tears, an inability to think clearly, physical shaking, and so many emotions… yet we’re darting to a place trying to manage those emotions and their physical toll while driving a car through red lights, switching lanes, making poor decisions, and fighting the physical toll of shaky hands, eyes filled with tears, all of which don’t help most of us drive better.
NotebookLM is an unlock!
I built a notebook LM that scanned in all her docs, notes, calendars, checkbooks as PDFs. That helped me share with the family a central place to ask questions, there weren’t papers “back at the house” whenever I could call another credit card to cancel her card, they would ask for her SSN, I would just ask the NotebookLM, and boom. It really helped me be present.
Every time I am on the phone with someone, I just fire up notebookLM and get answers about her will, her bills, you name it.
The real unlock is that it let me (and my family) spend more time thinking about her memory and laughing and crying and just sitting with the sadness then working through boxes of papers and docs.
Using notebookLM to manage moms paperwork let us spent more time on memories and grief
I ran a deep research query to see how much I talked about her and what I said.
I feel like I talk about my mom all the time and the role she played, I have the blog posts and other artifacts, but deep research gave me an opportunity to see my quotes and what not in my own words, and it brought back stuff I forgot I even said.
My prompt was simple: Find wil Reynolds references to his mom across podcasts, interviews, his company website etc. anything related to his mom.
It came back with this:
If my kids said these things and backed them up about me, I’d be pretty dang proud of them.
So when I ask myself… what kind of son was I to this person who is no longer here? I think a pretty good one.
Note: I left out 1 thing that my mom likely carried with her that disappointed her about who I was at the time of her passing. It wouldn’t be right to post since it is about my role in others lives in my family, but I will say this, I evaluated my role in how that thing turned out, I put myself through the ringer and decided, I did something that had it worked out would have made her very proud, but it went sideways and caused problems in our family & that she had to carry with her, and I am also VERY OK with that too, I know my heart was in the right place and I’m giving myself grace on that.
“If you don’t have imposter syndrome, you are probably a man”
I’ll never forget I was in San Diego at the Searchlove conference. One of the speakers opened her presentation asking about imposter syndrome, she asked people to raise their hands if they’ve ever had it.
Almost everyone’s hands went up. Mine did not, it was easier to join the crowd but I keep it real, it wasn’t MY truth. The next thing she said, made me reflect and has sat in my psyche for the last 8+ years. She said…look around at how many people’s hands are up everyone has imposter syndrome, except for a few.
Within 5 minutes of her getting into her presentation she reflected on her opening, and said…remember earlier when I asked about imposter syndrome and everyone’s hands went up, Ibet the only people who didn’t were men.
Ouch. Great opportunity to self reflect on why not me, is it because I’m a man, is it because I’m cocky or overconfident?
I’ve done a LOT of thinking on this topic since that was said and here are the reasons why I do not have imposter syndrome. I’ve been sitting on these thoughts for years (my poor wife has had to hear me working this out, checking myself, my biases, etc, for years)..I’ve been keeping this to myself cause I just didn’t feel like putting this out there, until last week…
Last week at an event called the HOPE summit with hopeworks, The panel got asked by a young lady in the crowd, how we deal with it and overcome it, it was the first time I publicly let out what I’ve known my whole life…I don’t have imposter syndrome.
I keep it 100 with young people, so I couldn’t hold this 5 year thought in any longer…
My Mom: They may have more money, bigger houses, etc but they are not better than you.
Many great things in my life come back to my mom, and I’m going to do my dang best to raise my kids with the confidence my mom instilled in me.
My mom recognized that she was raising a black boy, and “the talk” in our house wasn’t just about police, it was about “you aren’t going to get a fair shot” so be better. Tough.
It was drilled into my head from the jump…that because I’m black if I got a 3.5 GPA and a white kid got a 3.5, I wasn’t winning the job or the admission to college. If my resume was the same as my white counterparts, then I wasn’t going to get the job. I had to have confidence and the numbers to back it up.
I was told…
If you ever end up with average opportunities, you had to be above average to get there.
If you end up with above average opportunities you were going to have to be GREAT, and if you end up great you were likely exceptional.
The Private School Chat
I went to a catholic school, and while my first through 8th grade was mostly raised around kids like me with similar socio economic backgrounds, high school pulled from a lot more towns, and it was in that moment that I realized oh there’s new levels to this.
My mom would always remind me, these people have nicer houses, drive nicer cars, etc but they are NOT and will NEVER be better than you. You can’t be like them you have to be better than them.
Fun question to ask yourself: What is something that if you saw a family with you assumed they were rich? (mine: if they had a house with 2 doors on the front, they were loaded :))
Scoreboards are imposter syndrome repellant for me
When you don’t have a scoreboard, being “liked" is your currency. When you have a scoreboard “impact on goals” is your currency.
I was recently asked, how I deal with imposter syndrome, and I told the young lady who asked. I never had it. Then I went on to explain, this country seems to care a LOT more about green than it does black or white.
I always gravitated towards sports, “scoreboard bitch”.
I KNEW if I wasn’t good enough to start, I KNEW if I was.
I KNEW my batting average, and in the years where it was high, I made all star teams, I started all star teams, regional teams, etc. The years where it sucked, I was benched, I didn’t make those teams and win those awards. I didn’t get benched because I wasn’t liked.
I got benched because someone else’s contribution to the goal was higher than mine. That’s life.
The amount of practice I’d have to do to try to get close wasn’t worth it, but I knew I could practice more of I wanted it bad enough.
There was mom, every time I would say “the coach doesn’t like me” (no agency, out of my control) to say, “maybe you just arent good enough, you should practice more.” (agency, within my control).
What a mini scoreboard looks like
I remember I used to track hashtag usage at conferences, and if it was single track I would overlay hashtag usage by hour and then overlay the speaker schedule against hashtag usage. People would say “you crushed it” and that felt good and all, but it was that moment back at the hotel that mattered, the graphic that showed hashtag usage during my session.
You crushed it = Do they like me
Building a hashtag tracker = What is my value vs other speakers
Being leveraged vs Being Liked
Professionally, I don’t want or need you to like me, I want you to give me data that says YOU and I if it is you best interest to want me on your team because the data says I am likely to help you hit YOUR goals.
Search marketing, especially in the early days was just like a sport.
If I didn’t get the ranking, I sucked and I can study more, test more and get better.
That is great because I don’t spend time wondering “if I am liked” I spent my time getting better. There was no AltaVista or Hotbot algorithm that favored white folks. The numbers would tell me how good or great I was not some boss, all I needed was a scoreboard.
I continue to tell young people, get in a job with metrics.
Kids are always so surprised when I tell them I didn’t run into much overt racism in my corporate career. Why? I had metrics, data, etc that told me if I was an asset or not (and so did my managers).
That is why I encourage them to the best I can to go into a job where you can point and say “scoreboard bitch”. Just make sure your scoreboard moves revenue numbers and isn’t some vanity thing you made up to feel good about yourself.
If you are going to question your value, be around all stars.
We confuse launching websites, with analyzing the impact of that launch impact. We confuse speaking at conferences with being an asset to the conference attendees. We look for easy metrics to justify our worth, without the scrutiny on those metrics they deserve.
If you bat .300 in AA ball, YOU KNOW that isn’t winning. The goal is the pros. But in marketing if your email campaign gets a 10% higher CTR, you have no idea if that is winning in A ball or not, because you avoid being in places with all stars who might humble the same metrics that make you feel good and feed your ego.
Hang with all stars. Even if it exacerbates importer syndrome, its better than participation trophies that just lead to you questioning your value anyway.
Being the best in AA ball is never confused with being the best in the Pros.
I believe we should seek out being around people who have the potential to make our gains and wins smaller than we think, we need to be reminded of the levels, it is humbling.
Even when I sold sneakers at 16, I waited for the sales report to see how I did against the older sales people. When I worked at Amazon in a warehouse I tracked my speed to pick a full cart vs the average. I avoided the sameness conversation with others whom I saw as average, they all sounded the same, they complained about their pay, they hated the job, it is hot in the warehouse, etc etc.
I chose to spend my time with people who don’t complain. This impacts me even to this day. Too many of us choose small circles so we can avoid imposter syndrome, I think you should get in big circles and be humbled but also I spired to go harder.
Reward systems: Get married vs stay married
Where are you confusing an output (writing content) with an outcome (growing a business)?
Or as my brother and law in used to say:
Why do we spend all the money on getting married, when the real win is staying married, shouldn’t we have bigger parties every year you STAY married? Facts bro, facts.
Video of me talking about outputs vs outcomes
At this point everyone has imposter syndrome
What's funny is right after I got asked that question. I joined a meeting with some very heavy hitters and for a few minutes I felt, home smokes how am I here? But quickly I realized well if they are at this level and I got selected to be here someone thinks I can add value.
But at this point asking a room of people “who has imposter syndrome” is like asking who like travel, or who here likes breathing…so once everyone has it, does anyone?
Avoiding “minority certification” helped me avoid Imposter Syndrome
When I look at my clients there’s some big companies who have entrusted us at a time for their success. Many are very large, and we’re working on meaningful projects with. None ever came through a minority owned initiative.
What does this have to do with imposter syndrome? Everything.
I’ve avoided people & programs that explicitly say they want to help black and brown founders, why? So I don’t have to question for a second on whether or not my company is “good enough”.
This isn't a knock on people who do, I just wanted to prove to myself first and that took me 20 years.
I got work to do, so no ending to wrap up this 5 year long post that I finally wrote 🙂
“When you make a promise you give hope, when you follow through you build trust.”
That was the quote from the speed of trust that nailed it for me, I was sick of asking for “forgiveness” when my inbox was so full that I couldn’t see an email in my inbox anymore.
It wasn’t an email problem, it was a me problem. I’ve always had this problem. I try to help as many people as I can, which is a good thing, but without a system to make sure I follow through, I’m actually just disappointing too many people.
Trust can be diminished in an instant, after years of building it up, it is fragile.
Too many of us say: “If I just had an AI meeting tool to keep track of all my to-do’s” but that isn’t really a solve for missing to-do’s and deadlines.
Your comfort or discomfort with blowing a deadline, or missing an email that isn’t about tech, that is about you.
I have tried 10+ different systems to be better at managing promises / deadlines. The thing that finally landed me on a good system, was that I felt missed deadlines were broken promises and unforced withdrawals from the “trust bank” with people, so I had no choice but to keep working at it.
I had tablets (for email only), meeting schedulers, AI tools, EA’s, Zapiers, Makes, to-do lists, google tasks, reminders, inbox pause tools, folder systems, you name it I tried it.
Thankfully today I have a system that helps me be stronger than ever, but it was the desire to get better that made me better, the desire to avoid disappointing people once again and once again.
Is the “trust loss” of a broken promise worth setting up the Free system.
Clockify — FREE
Email Folders — FREE
Followupthen -FREE (up to 50) — $4/mo
Slack + Zapier — FREE (until you get to too many zaps /month)
Inbox pause — FREE
Exec Assistant — NOT FREE 🙂
Pause Inbox
I work out of my inbox, so I must stop the flow of what comes in (I use inbox pause for that). I peek into my paused inbox every once in a while throughout the day but you can set up all kinds of rules to make sure the right things get through.
Clockify
I track my time sorting email, differently than answering email
I do subscribe to the OHIO method to best I can, only hit it once. I try to file it or answer it.
I also found in my weekly hours reviews that I had these big blocks of “email” that is where folders came into play.
Email Folders
For good or bad I work linearly, so I must put my folders in number order so my folder names sound like:
1 — Sales
1 — Client Work
2 — Innnovation
2 — Sales
3–HR
Putting them in number order means when I go to work linearly, there is no confusion about what I should do… work the 1’s until they are empty. By having a folder system I can change my hours from marketing, to sales, to innovation, to charity in my time tracker, which helps me do analyses like this with more precision.
Slack + Zapier
We use slack a lot here, and that can get messy in keeping track of promises so I set up a Zapier that if I hit “save” it automatically pushes into my inbox, where I have a system, as you are reading, to keep track of my promises. Slack is very hard for me to manage all the promises in, so that is one key thing…get all the promises in ONE place.
Followupthen
Ever have an email staring at you, taking up space in yoiur inbox and pushing other emails to “page 2” — I’m telling you, page 2 is where promises go to be forgotten!
Folowupthen is so much better than Google’s reminders and it crushes on mobile in your regular gmail app, just add the FUTs to your address book, it is so much faster. Every Jan1, every email receipt for donations come back into my inbox for instance.
Repeat followupthen’s are my jam: every20hours@, every3weeks@ or everyfriday8a@ or every february@ they allow you delete something you just can’t get to, knowing it won’t be forgotten because it is coming back in. For some reason my brain works better if I let that happen vs filing them away all the time.
The autocomplete is so helpful!!
Executive Assistant
My EA has to have full access to my inbox, that allows her to go into my folders and align us on our daily standups… She’ll say things like
“Wil, this email has been sitting in 1 — Client work for 2 days, yet I saw you clock 2 hours on team shout outs, I need you to refocus, move it to another priority, etc etc.”
Now, not everyone can have an accountability partner like that, but you can use AI to do some of it, espcialy with tools like Open AI’s Operator. You could technically try having it look at your hours in clockify or use zapier to dump your hours somewhere and then you could use operator to go into your inbox and look for certain folders (I would recommend you give it the exact URL to each of your high priority folders).
As leaders, we often find ourselves in the role of helper and problem-solver. It’s part of our job to anticipate needs, clear roadblocks, and guide our teams towards success.
But how often do we experience that level of care and foresight directed towards us?
Well I just felt what it felt like … and it felt so good that it made me want to be a better leader and level up for my customers. Maybe as leaders once in a while we should feel what it feels like to have someone be ahead of us as inspiration on how we can be that for our clients, but you have to FEEL it, cause if you treat yourself to an amazing hotel, where the team is THIS good, you can’t help but ask yourself… How can I help steer my business in a way where we aspire to that level of service, that kind of service that makes a client exhale and their shoulders drop because they think of your company as a “we got this” team vs a “what do you want us to do” team.
An unnamed CEO (unless they choose to let me change this), once said to me…you gave me a gift Wil, the gift of your time, advice, etc…and they went on to say that as a CEO every email is someone who wants something from us, every refresh of the inbox is likely to result in an ask, someone taking or needing something from me, that can be exhausting. While I don’t 100% feel that way, I do get it and I empathize.
During a recent stay at Kasbah Tamadot in Morocco (this is about to be the longest hotel review you’ve ever seen) I had this reflection, I recorded every little thing they did so I could vivdly wirte this post because every day,multiple times a day I was blown away and I knew I’d forget these stories. I wanted to write this post to give them a shout out, but also to give you a feel on the lengths they went and how it gave me a new gear to aspire to. I’ve been a sucker for great service all my life, a sucker for people who lighten my load, and love books like this one.
I had a realization: I’ve rarely, if ever, felt what it’s like to have everyone at a hotel so dialed in to my preferences that they can predict what I and my family might want and they just do it, no questions, they just do it because what they know is the last thing I want on vacation is making more decisions.
They functioned as a team, you could just tell they knew what the right thing to do was for guests, no hesitation, no nothing. That reminded me of the asset of longevity as a leadership team (I can imagine there’s some liability in there too, but its definitely more of an asset to me). Almost every one of my execs has been with Seer over 10 years.
They planned a scavenger hunt for my kid’s birthday
A perfect example of this was when I mentioned wanting to do a scavenger hunt with my kids (thanks Ellie) on their birthday in the Atlas Mountains.
With just that single request, they handled everything.
They got the drivers to take us, they found local people to assist in the planning, our guide brought his kids along so my kids could play tag, hide and seek, and play games with his kids, they contacted an ex pat to help figure out what would be educational and fun (we learned how to build baskets with a the guide’s grandmother), they printed maps for my children, even when we checked in, they said, “in 2 days you’ll be doing a scavenger hunt, here is the menu of items we can pack for your lunch”, they created clues for items to find, they got a photographer for us to take pictures, so I could enjoy with my kids…they did soooooo much from 1 request. Once I was willing to pay for the experience, that was the only question I had. All I had to do was…enjoy and in the photo below, this picture can’t be taken unless you got someone great with the camera wit you. If you are the photographer of the family, sometimes take a photographer along with you, so you can get pictures like this.
Niko and I stocking rocks for our target practice game
A Complimentary Mini Bar speaks volumes
If you are like me, I’ll spend 10 minutes contemplating the cost vs value of a coke when it is in a mini bar.
I also like places with mini bars that are complimentary, all over the property there were fridges where you could just take cokes, beers, water, ginger ale, etc…I think it goes to show something about the service and how they just want you to enjoy, I think the mini bar is just an example but it’s that kind of hospitality that makes them say look I want you to enjoy yourself here and if you want to drink I don’t want you looking at the price of a beer or a wine and choosing not to enjoy yourself, because you’re looking at the cost. Trust me I am already paying for it, it isn’t free.
In our businesses how often does every request become a “let me go see the cost or scope” vs is there another way to make your pricing and interactions less friction-full?
What is our business “mini-bar” that we could make complimentary?
Imagine if contracts had a 10 hour buffer, where once the client is over a certain level, they team is given the latitude to solve problems, but we do it in a way that is transparent with the client, so they understand there is a “bank” of hours set aside…where our teams can solve any problem, with Seer people or outside of Seer doesn’t matter, we will get the people who can help you with the problem. I think one of the things agencies do a lot is we open that mini bar but never tell our clients. It might be that simple.
This doesn’t mean everything is free, notice I paid for a lot of this stuff, but some small things like the mini bar is an example.
Small thing: Free drinks
Big thing: Include the cost, remove the friction.
Team-based Service and managing hand offs
Here’s a few other things that I want to give as examples they seem to work in teams here and have handoffs for their guests if somebody’s going to be out.
So their people after a day or two knew what your kids ordered for breakfast and how they ordered things that was also pretty amazing. On monday my oldest son ordered a breakfast without eggs, the next morning when he went to order, he paced the order but forgot to ask for that adjustment. Instantly, the server said, without eggs right? This can only be done when you care and have the time to provide that level of attention.
When we arrived I told them, my brother in law is coming tomorrow, and asked do we have a driver…they responded…instantly…
“Aron’s transfer is booked Mr. Reynolds”
They had already remembered the names of everyone in my party (even the ones who are not there yet) so when I referred to him as my “brother in law” (cause how the heck would they know his name) they responded with his name, this was within 15 minutes of us being on property.
That small gesture made my shoulders slump, weight was lifted, I could palpably feel it, these guys were going to take care of us. In every way, and more importantly…they were about to offer a set of care I haven’t seen for a LONG time, if ever. That impression was made in 15 minutes. They act as a “team” focused on me and my family.
When one of the staffers was leaving and wouldn’t be there to see us off on our last day, he found me and brought over a new person, he literally said
“Sorry I won’t be here to see you and Rio, Niko, Nora, and Aron off, but this is ________ (dang now I feel bad I don’t remember all of THEIR names) and he knows your preferences and will make sure he gives you great service while you are here.”
How can I do better handoffs in my business, how can I hire people who show that level of care when handing off, and take it personally even when clients are leaving? Dare I say I actually have a ton of people like this already, the messages of thanks when clients move on where ex clients are surprised at how well we handed off to the new agency, and how we finished strong shocks all people involved, super proud of the team — you can lose business and retain relationships and relationships always take you far.
Small thing: Say goodbye to me and my family and ensuring clear handoffs
Big thing: When the “relationship” ends, make handoffs and show the same care at “kickoff” as you do at “exit” regardless of how it goes down.
They drove 1.5 hours to get a sweatshirt I left in a restaurant, when I told them it was no biggie.
The hotel recommended a hotel in the Medina about 70 minutes away, we went, we loved it, we left our jackets. Ouch. Once we got back to the hotel, I realized it and I went to the reception area and told them that in 2 days we would be back in the area again and could pick them up in 2 days, the restaurant is only 10 minutes from the airport. They said no problem.
So I assumed that in 2 days we would get them. They had a different idea, but didn’t say to me “we’ll get it” they just said OK, knowing they were not going to do that.
The next day, when we woke up, the sweatshirt and jacket was at our front door. That means someone drove 70 minutes each way (maybe they had to pick someone up at the airport or something), to bring back our jackets.
When I told them…that wasn’t necessary…they said, it gets a little chilly here at night so we thought you might want them. I was blown away.
Every morning when we wake up there is a table set with five chairs because there are five people in our party in the restaurant which means somebody’s thinking through in advance of who all is on the hotel property and how big are their groups and they set up your tables in advance based on your group size with umbrellas and everything to block the sun, they have absolutely no idea when we’re going to wake up but it’s always prepared and ready when we’re there.
I never heard:
When do you want breakfast
How many are in your party
Give me a second so I can set the table
Let me go get the umbrellas to shade you
What I got:
Wake up whenever I want
Walk to restaurant
Sit down in the shade at a table made for my party
No thoughts at all, no waiting
Where am I asking my clients questions, where I could just predict after enough time what they want? Where am I asking a question, where I can proactively solve a problem, and show up with a “gift” for my client, already done… You start to treat the client in a way that makes them say…wow, why have I never been treated like that before?
The items they gave us that we couldn’t bring home, no problem.
In Morocco they cook in tagines and after we did our cooking class with the chef at the hotel they gave us each a tagine to take home, well we had no space in our luggage and they are fragile so they told us they would send them home for us and that they would get someone that’s a carpenter to build a box for us to keep them secure. I wanted these items because me and my kids cooked in them, we learned how to cook in tagines and I wanted those memories with me, the ones that the hotel uses for their cooking.
Now of course this is going to cost me some money, when I sat there trying to figure out how to get these home, they didn’t give me up a bunch of options they basically said if you’re okay with us shipping them to Marrakesh will have somebody there make a crate for you and give us a price and as long as that price is good we’re good to send it to you. I didn’t have to try to think through, do I just want 1, do I want all 5, can I put one in my luggage, how can I store it so it doesn’t break, etc etc etc, I didn’t have to think of those 20 options because they literally said, if you are cool with the price, then we’ll get you this home.
We’ll stay open, just for you and your family when you get back
We’re here at a time where there’s not a ton of other guests so we went out to dinner the other night late probably around 7:30 and before we left they asked us if we wanted to come back to the bar, the reason why they ask is because they will keep somebody on site at the bar with nobody coming through if we tell them that we’re coming back and want to go to the bar.
Thought: Be ready when your clients needs you, client has a board meeting? Be ready on the phone, in case they get a hard question, after a board meeting ask them…where did you feel prepared or under prepared for tough questions you got. Find out when your client POC has a recurring meeting wit their boss, maybe make yourself available, already there with your version of an umbrella and seats.
The road to success is just mistakes well handled
I was going to be gone for my wife’s birthday, so I used this opportunity to get her a spa day while here. When I walked over, the spa wasn’t opened… so I went to the reception, you could tell they were horrified that something went wrong. They told me to go back to my place and they would handle it…30 minutes later they came to our door and let us know that we can go over whenever we are ready. I told them we’d head over in 30 minutes. We decided to start walking over after 10 minutes, as we are walking the reception desk person was waiting on the path, in 90 degree heat under no shade. He stopped us, and said “we’re comp’ing your spa appointment, we’re so sorry” that wasn’t what impressed me. What impressed me is that 20 minutes before I was expected to leave my house to walk over they were already on the path, waiting…in the heat…because they just wanted to make sure to apologize and tell us this was comped. They could have just stayed in the spa with the air conditioning.
Intentional “friction”
If the place we’re going is in a developing country I want them to hire mostly locals and care about that vs expats. I’d really enjoyed staying here because everyone here is at some different level of English and I like that they lean into the fact that sometimes some people you may talk to might need to go get someone else to help you but they’re not going to hire a bunch of expats to make me feel more comfortable.
And just when I thought I had given you every example of how well they took care of me when I turned on my phone when I landed back in Philadelphia my driver had messaged me checking to see how the flight was and how the family did on the way home. Again that has never happened, ever, anywhere.
The only thing that felt heavy the whole time was leaving, it was emotional for me.
We woke up, I felt heavy shoulders, not because I had to go home and get back to work, it was because I realized that this feeling was going to end, I have only once felt compelled to shake everyone's hand, say thank you, and goodbye which I did to every single staffer & gardener I could find. Every single one. I wanted them to know how meaningful their care of me and my family meant to me. I got all these stories in only 4 days on property.
I am not one for telling people “they deserve” vacations because guess what, I ain’t paying for it. But if you’ve made it this far, I share these stories with you not to say “stay at this place” but to say once in a while it might be worth it to stretch.
Providing this level of service is exhausting
Which means it has to be deeply personal for you as someone who works with clients, smiles cost nothing, trying to predict what somebody might want next doesn’t cost anything but I could see how it’s exhausting always trying to think one step ahead of your customer or client, this isn’t something I think you can train I think it’s an innate thing in people to either want someone to feel great as a result of being in their presence or to just believe that their job is to do whatever was in the job description.
But if you ever feel the way I felt on this trip, you almost can’t help but walk away and ask yourself am I missing those little moments to be a step ahead of my client and help them take a back seat the way the team at the Kasbah Tamadot did for me and my family. Because I’ll never forget what that felt like, And I’ll go back in a heartbeat to capture that feeling once again.
Renting the property for my team
I want more people to feel this feeling, so when I got back I got pricing on what it would cost to rent the whole property to maybe do a leadership retreat some day…now I got a goal to add and a reason to work harder and grow this thing…cause I believe if they all felt what I felt as leaders we’d all want to be better for our clients, and that will help take us to places well beyond our dreams.
Those greedy CEOs, they are to blame for this, if they were just more generous, people would be more / less _____________.
Given how I run my company, I tend to attract a certain type of conversation with other leaders who reach out for coffee. They see that I work hard to be transparent about my journey, and I seem generous with my team and they are trying to replicate it in some way.
So a lot of CEO friends ask me how I’m so happy, motivated to keep working, when I don’t have to, enduring the day to day people-based headaches, pains, and to be honest, heartbreaks — all of which are on top of just trying to run the business.
First it is that in Jeff, Emily, Crystal, Larry, and Steve I have a brick house of a leadership team that have a combined 60 years-ish working with me.
Your generosity when it comes with strings attached, even if unsaid, will cause you heartbreak.
Overly Generous CEOs can set themselves up for depression, I’m seeing it with a few friends I’ve recently chatted with. They are giving more and more, taking more personal sacrifices, and finding out the hard way that sacrificing comforts at home, time with family, etc isn’t getting them a thank you when that generosity is expressed, much less long term loyalty, leading to some serious disappointment.
The year I had my highest profit distribution, was the same year I had my highest turnover.
Yeah, let that sink in for a minute. They year I set a record for highest % of profits and raw # of $ given to the team in profit share was was same year I set a record for people leaving Seer.
It’s interesting how we have this belief that a CEO who is transparent, generous, etc will have coworkers who reward that generosity with loyalty.
I didn’t go into my profit share expecting new found loyalty, I also didn’t expect to set turnover records (in the mid 20’s I think).
As I write this, I think when you are generous you really should be signaling at best to a small group of people, not expecting some “across the team” loyalty.
The Key: Securing your mask before helping others
As a CEO or an owner of a business, you need to first define what “enough” money for you and your family looks and feels like. Then you need to secure your “mask” and the “mask” of your family as soon as humanly possible. Run to that enough point.
This isn’t a cop-out for not being generous today.
I believe CEOs who wake up with a generous mindset are almost always too generous early on and sacrifice putting on the mask for them and their families. Once you give something to your team, you can’t take it back without pain. I’ve been there, the one day I didn’t feel like going into work was the result of me giving an employee who left a bonus 4 months after they left the company (when we were under 10 people).
For me, securing my mask wasn’t about some big, lofty, fancy life. It was about:
Paying off my house
Afford the best roofer (House had mad leaks for 5 years)
Buying a nice car with great tech
Taking vacations w/ my family (mostly as part of my business travel, and also use my status / points to fly my family for free)
Have a nanny who could travel with us (which allows my wife and I to both work)
Tuition for my kids so I can continue to live in the city and get them a great education
Fix stuff at my parents / in laws houses
To me (and only me) these weren’t crazy indulgent luxuries, they were about security, peace of mind, and some joy for me and my family.
I know CEOs that haven’t made money in six months and haven’t been able to give raises to their people in two years. When they finally have a good quarter or a good year, they’re much more likely to give those people raises than they are to take care of themselves. That is how many generous CEOs act, however it comes at a cost.
Expecting Loyalty + Not Securing Your Mask = Depression, Resentment, Frustration.
Here’s the kicker: when CEOs make day-to-day sacrifices for their team, they often develop expectations around their generosity.
You start believing the hype that if you aren’t like those CEOs who compensate themselves in ways like the above your employees would be more sticky that just is the wrong way to look at it.
I chatted with Khe Hy (worth a follow) who helped me see this through the lens of Buddhism — he told me that we don’t have the right to expectations on the fruits of our generosity. If you’re going to be generous with your team, just do it. But do it without expectation.
“You have a right to perform your prescribed duties, but you are not entitled to the fruits of your actions. Never consider yourself the cause of the results, and never be attached to not doing your duty.”
This quote highlights the idea that when you give or act with generosity, you should let go of any attachment to the outcome or the recipient’s actions.
In Buddhism, this concept is often referred to as “dana” (generosity) without attachment.
You give with expectations when you haven’t secured the mask…
However, that’s really hard to do when you haven’t secured the mask for you and your family.
I just wish THEY knew the sacrificing I am making
It’s not your employees job to know your personal sacrifices for them / their families well being. It is your job to make sure you have secured or are on a strong path to secure) the mask for you and your family, so you can be OVERLY generous later without expectations and resentment.
Your personal sacrifices for your team will cause you to resent them
Every single day, you’re reminded of those daily frustrations, every day I heard a dodge charger rip down I-95, I was reminded that I had “bad windows and that I was woken up because of them”. So when you don’t get those thank-yous for your generosity, the sting is so much deeper. You start thinking “wait, do I not have good windows, so I can give out bonuses, just for this lack of thank you’s for what I’m doing?”
What is “life changing” money?
Very quickly, I started realizing that there was no more joy to be unlocked. I tried to figure out how my life would change with more money, and didn't like what I came up with, so I didn’t do those things. That is when I knew I secured the mask for me and my family. I will say, I will spend insane amounts of money on vacation to have someone else care about me having a good time to the nth degree.
I’m always gonna be that guy who uses points to try to upgrade, but has no problem flying coach. You have to go through imagining your liquid net worth being at increasing levels until it gets to a level at which you kind of feel that the things you are doing are ridiculous. That’s when you know what your line is.
Generosity Without Strings
You set yourself up for disappointment and even resentment when you’ve given out bonuses or raises while you know you haven’t taken one in years. How many of us tell our teams “unplug on vacation”, but recognize that maybe if we do and that deal doesn’t get closed people might lose their jobs?
When my work life balance as a CEO could cause you to lose your job, would you still want me to “unplug”? That is what I thought.
When you walk out of that office door into your home and see the things you’re not doing for yourself or your family because of your generosity at the company, it can quickly turn into resentment. This can make you really not want to spend time at the company you built, with the people you deep down love and want great things for. But that is a YOU problem, no one said you had to be that generous, and now you can’t take it back so just be a bit smarter next time raises or bonus time comes.
So yes, we should always strive to be generous as CEOs. But we need to do it without attaching our self-worth or happiness to the reactions of others. Don’t give people power over your generosity by having expectations.
Remember, we don’t have the right to the fruits of our generosity. But we do have the power to create a culture of genuine care and generosity, both in our companies and in the world at large. So secure your mask, define your ‘enough,’ and then secure others masks, there’s real joy in knowing that your generosity will help others do good for their families and loved ones.
In the last few weeks, I have flown to Akron Ohio (we now have 10+ people in Ohio) and San Diego (we have about 8 people there too, and an office).
If I’m being honest I miss having a bigger team there because we located in a tougher part of the city (at the time) and I felt we could be a part of helping something “get better” as a unit. Looking at the photo below reminds me of some of the awesome people we had there, do I miss it, yeah but I’m grateful AF that I had the experience with this big crew, lots of good peeps in this photo.
Team San Diego after our profit share announcement, they did a boat thing 🙂
At one point in my career, I got great joy from finding people to vent and complain to about the company I worked at. I owe 22 years of running Seer to the out of body experience I had one day where I looked at myself and said…look at you…you can’t wait for the clock to strike 12, and why…because you get 1 hour to talk crap on the company you work for and drag others into that complaint cycle. That was the highlight of my day. That was sad.
Me in a hairnet, somewhere in Akron.
I owe volunteering to assisting me to break out of that cycle. It wasn’t until I started volunteering at a children’s hospital was I able to see something greater than my “problems” and I stopped using my time to complain, it was OK that I was at a good company, full of good people, who were doing the best they could, even if that wasn’t right for me anymore. I decided to use my lunch breaks to learn a skill, sharpen my saw on search, do some non profit SEO work. Eventually when the timing was right, I quit, all those lunches that used to be spent complaining, were now used to do pro-bono work and some of my own client work, and sure enough when I left, the charities I was helping with digital marketing, showed up, referred me clients. Peter Madden at AgileCat said…this guy is pretty good and referred me to at least 3 clients, and that was the foundation of what got built today.
It started by looking at myself in the mirror, getting a broader perspective on life, which lead me to the decision that complaining and venting about my employer was a waste of time, which lead me to doing pro bono work to stay sharp, which lead me to starting Seer full time. I still to this day put in time, real time to keep that spirit of volunteering alive with the team.
Me, back in a hairnet, this time 2 weeks later in San Diego.
A lot of good can come from volunteering and broadening your perspective in tough times. I had never worked in a food bank, never visited one, yet I saw the people in one recently and how much love goes into the people who work there, the chefs who teach people how to make multiple meals with the same ingredients, the dieticians who work with teams on how to manage diebetes or other health issues at a diet level, the workers at the food pantry, who set up the shelves and what not to feel like a grocery store, because just giving people food is a good start, but giving them the dignity of choosing food and filling their carts matters so much too.
These last 2 weeks have further broadened my perspective and made me a better human, I got closer to my teams, whom I miss dearly connecting with at volunteer events and I also got to continue to broaden my perspective which I think helps me manage any kinds of tough times.
Lastly, this shit comes at a cost…kids were at home and Nora was having to manage the household solo, doing these things have costs and I have to always make sure I am keeping those in check too.
This morning, I’m sick. Some kind of brutal stomach bug. I got ready to brew my coffee and while it was brewing, I looked out my window.
There was someone under blankets shaking, a lot.
My block has probably 35 residences, I am one of only 2 with a window that faces the street. The new design in my neighborhood (which used to be a ton of warehouses) looks like this, all the homes face each other, and garages on the first floor.
As I prepared my coffee I noticed that someone was curled up in a bunch of blankets… shivering underneath of those blankets. It is maybe 30 degrees out at best. The identity of the person was obscured by the layers of fabric, their humanity was there in plain sight, but if they were black or white, woman or man, child or adult.
I decided that I’d take my morning cup and give it to whoever was under there, but I admit I delayed for 2 minutes. I was faced with that decision.
It’s not all unicorns and rainbows…I love city life, and I dislike a lot about it too, but I stay because it gives me multiple opportunities every day to help someone who might need it, as I see people struggling some days and I choose to stay here and try to be a part of the solution. Monday I walked to Community College to help underdog entrepreneurs. Today I walked out my front door to help someone.
I married the right chick
And as my wife started backing out of the driveway to take the kids to school, she came back in the house. She said, I’m going to get him something. I told her I was already on it, she pointed me to where the disposable mugs were and I poured the coffee out of my mug and into the cardboard cup, put on my jacket and sat it next to him. I could see him moving, but he never responded when I said, repeatedly…there’s hot coffee by your feet. I walked back inside and looked out.
Waking up this guys struggles were apparent, He definitely has mental health problems he is also definitely is somebody’s son or uncle or father or husband.
We “optimize” for kindness in this house. Every day I ask my kids this simple question “what did you do kind today” or my back up “did you see kindness today” got to see their mother and father help an unknown man or woman underneath the blankets. They will either answer that question today with a way they were kind to someone, or I gave them something to say back…we saw you and mama help someone on the streets.
It was a silent agreement of shared values, we extend a hand in this family.
I get to confront my beliefs daily
It’s easy to talk about homelessness, but living in the city, you live close to people, very close, to all kinds of people. And some of those people need help. It’s a daily confrontation with a choice: the comfort of routine, or buying into the “danger” the news would like us to believe or lean into the discomfort of engagement. Am I going to step over this person and get my day started, or am I going to brew them a cup of coffee & sit it next to them?
This moment wasn’t just about a cup of coffee. It was a reminder of why I cherish city life, for all of its bumps and bruises. It’s a life filled with moments that challenge us to act, to reflect on our humanity and our connection to others. Some days, it’s just helping somebody with their bags… Sometimes it’s just saying hello… And some days, you look at a blue blanket moving up and down, and you know that it doesn’t take much to put a cup of coffee out next to somebody and say to them, here’s a cup of coffee.
While I gotcha here…there’s another story I’ve been meaning to tell…
The plug
The first 3 weeks of moving into my new home, I saw on the security camera some homeless person was on my front steps. Charging their phone. Grrrrrr, I just moved into this home after dreaming of it for 7 years and now I got someone leaving their stuff on my front step! I was hot also, my kids and wife are inside.
I had a choice to make do I get a plug with a lock on the front, have it removed, turn off the breaker? After all, I don’t want people stopping by every day charging their phones. It seemed like a normal, natural decision. But then I thought of my experiences hearing from homeless youth over the years, that phone is sometimes their only lifeline.
This month I “celebrate” 2 years in my house, people have charged on my stoop, some have even damaged the plug, meaning I have already had to pay someone to come out. Not to lock it up, or brick it over, but to fix it. So it works for the next person who comes along. Come to think of it. I have never used that plug on the front of my house, but I have seen 6–10 people who have.
If that is my small contribution that once every 18–24 months I gotta repair it, I’m ok with that.
I challenge default states…default is lock it or brick it over for “safety”, what default state are you in that you aren’t questioning?
