Wil Reynolds

Author: wilreynolds

  • When life changing money, isn’t…

    My journey to enough, why I turned down an 8 figure offer for my company, and whats next for Seer.

    Background that might add context if you don’t know much about my company:

    I Bootstrapped it(no investors, didn’t even run up my credit cards), I am the 100% owner (no partners), we have ZERO DEBT, Every year we’ve been profitable.

    I turned down calls from tire kickers all the time (saw you in the inc 5000, wanna sell?), but this one time a good friend asked me if Seer would be interested in an acquisition by his company, that I respected a TON. So I took the call, what a ride it was…

    That led to me getting a generous offer for my company, that would have left me after all fees, lawyers, taxes, bonuses, etc with 8 figures in the bank and the ability to earn a considerable amount more in the 2 year earn out. Yeah that wouldn’t be a bad “exit” for a dude when went to school to be a teacher and whose dad brought home government cheese, but I still said no…here’s what I learned in the process…broken down into 3 sections, this is a long one.

    1 — How I accidentally set myself up in the strongest negotiating position ever. And my blueprint for how you might want to consider putting yourself in that position too.

    2 — How I learned what my true values are, how they were tested, w/ some thinking points for you to find your own “enough”.

    3 — Once you turn down an offer, now WTF does that mean for you, your team, your company?

    Get your super powers ready, how I accidentally put myself in a majorly strong negotiating position.

    Coming from NOTHING is a super power

    Feeling others pain, helps build up your protection against thinking you have real stress / problems. Most entrepreneurs have the ability to get a good job after their business failure, that was comforting enough for me.

    My dad brought home a brown long rectangular cardboard box of free cheese from the government, I hated when he brought that home. I knew what it meant, he left our middle class town to go back to the hood, where he’d pick up “Guv’ment” Cheese. Knowing people who live that way and being close to them impacts you in ways you can’t imagine.

    I am hyper-appreciative of everything I have

    As such I don’t feel the need to have more than I already have, so I kicked up our charitable giving.

    When you see our commitment to charity — I don’t just write checks to charities, I try to spend time with people in addition to writing checks, it helps me to feel others struggle, which helps me be reminded that I have no real struggles (also helps me be a better marketer), whereas hanging with entrepreneurs all the time will lead to you comparing your “struggles” relative to the other rich / privileged people you hang out with.

    I guess you can say I’ve always wanted to stay grounded, even as my company “took off”.

    The toughest question

    What’s your exit number…what a crippling question. At what $$ would I sell the company?

    So I started by asking myself how would my life change if I had …

    500,000 in the bank
    What about 1 Million
    What about 5 Million
    What about 10 Million
    What about 25 Million
    What about 50 Million

    Seriously, now go back, between 500,000 and 1 million — can you visualize the difference in your life?

    Move on to the next one 1–5 million — how’s your life different when you jump from one to the other? Then next and next. You’ll start making up outlandish shit just because.

    Then keep doing it, I bet you have a harder and harder time finding things you would do, if you have a chance to sell your company. Hold on to that. WRITE THAT SHIT DOWN!! That is the first step in avoiding the “more for the sake of more” trap.

    I tossed and turned trying to figure out, what would I do differently?

    Every business advisor said to me, what is your number, the lawyers, the brokers, the financial advisors … whats your number? GRRRRRRRR!

    I finally settled on a minimum, 8 figures after taxes, pre earn out which was in part packaged with some of the best advice I ever got from one of my advisors:

    Pick a number, and then when that number comes, like a buffalo you find early on a hunt…shoot it. DO NOT allow yourself to hesitate on the trigger thinking, “It’s early there will be more buffalo coming, bigger ones”, only to find that you spend all day realizing that the one you could have gotten you didn’t get because you wanted more.

    When you get an offer for your business that is STRONG, financially you are supposed to pull the trigger and shoot it, don’t wait for that next buffalo. That kept ringing in my head.

    I eventually FORCED myself to figure this out…

    When life changing money, isn’t.

    When your dad grows up broke, w/ a drug addicted dad, drunk mother, welfare, etc… you feel like a privileged asshole saying no to a big payoff.

    Common statements I heard like…when that wire hits your account, and you see 8 figures, your life is changed forever. Really?

    What would I do differently? So I forced myself to do the above, it took me weeks to come up with these two options:

    #1 — Buy a house on the beach in Rio De Janiero!
    My son’s name is Rio. That is how happy I am when I am in the city.

    Rio, on the beach in…Rio

    But then I thought I have a kid (now 2 kids), he’s 2 the other is 2 weeks….eventually they are going to be in school, and then what am I gonna do? Take them out of class every month so daddy can fly to Rio with the family and stay at our beach house in Leblon?

    Ok with that out, my next one was…

    #2 — Fly private once in a while, that was DISGUSTING to think about. 
    I fly a lot, and I enjoy it. I also deeply enjoy being with my family, and very few people, so private would be dope. Flying with my family is a little stressful, not much, but 1 nanny, 1 wife, 2 kids, occasionally a grandma and myself for hundreds of hours a year is a LOT. Wouldn’t it be easier to sit on a 6–8 person plane, avoid all the shit? Could I blow through real money that way too, yup. So I would only do it on occasion, 2–3 times a year when the whole family is flying somewhere long (west coast or Europe).

    As an AVgeek, I’ll someday try it though. Without my kids 🙂

    Also I suck at getting exposure to something once, and not wanting it forever, do you?

    Ever have a great Ribeye steak? Hard to go back to the stuff mom cooked as a kid.
    Ever have a hotel treat you like royalty, hard to go back to the holiday inn express.
    Ever have a car with all gadgets, only to get a rental w/ no back up camera, or supercharged v8?

    I can only imagine that flying private is the same way, and that is scary.

    I live in fear of getting used to more and more shit that separates me from most people’s reality, you should too, that is how you start going from “if I could only have a million, to nah I need a billion)

    People who fly private say d-bag shit like this

    DEBT is the mother of all stress.

    Living on credit sucks, fuck balance transfer bonuses. Fuck a mortgage, I don’t have one, I’d rather live in a house I could pay off in 10 years (or completely in cash) than one I have to work 30 to pay off. I’m a financial advisers nightmare, I’ll pay off low interest debt when its not “smart”, why? Because not one financial adviser has yet been able to put a price/value on 2 things — 1, my lack of stress and 2 my multitude of options / flexibility.

    The most powerful place to be in a company sale is having NO DEBT and a mentality that you have “enough” and don’t need more. I hate the word literally but in the discussions you can LITERALLY be like can be like pay me X and do these things or I’m not interested cause, I’m Good, I’ll wait.

    Living below your means and running a profitable business with a strong future puts you in a powerful, powerful position.

    Before Seer, while in college, I ran up my credit cards so high, that I remember putting stuff back at the acme supermarket and re-swiping my card, only to get rejected, return some stuff and come back, swipe, rejected. Whew I got hot dogs tonight.

    The sad part is that happened to me, while on full ride at a great University, I wasn’t a poor kid, I was a kid who bought doc martins, went on spring breaks, and bought 80 dollar Abercrombie shorts, dumb ass.

    I felt that sting of choosing to be broke. Not because I couldn’t make ends meet b/c I made bad decisions with my finances. I felt the sting of the internal “I deserve a vacation” convos that led to me being broke and stressed for NO reason. I promised myself I’d never go back to that again, ever.

    I remember that day my credit card balance went to zero, I felt the freedom and I never went back again. Get something to zero, feel that feeling…then commit to doing that for more and more bills. Find something you can pay off fast, even if the % isn’t the highest, you create no debt momentum and it keeps you addicted to the right thing, NO DEBT.

    When I started Seer I had already learned my lesson. So when it came time to buy a house, I decided to buy a triplex and live in the worst apartment in it, it was crappy, but worked. I slept on my college futon (given to me as a hand me down from my brother in law) for 10 years after college before I bought a mattress. When I started doing “well enough” I bought another triplex and moved across the street. Renters paid my bills, meaning I could make less and still live quite well. Eventually at 30 (I started Seer at 26), I decided to move into the city into a single family house.

    Today I’d probably buy a tiny house while starting my business 🙂

    Loving your job is a superpower…

    Ok, so I sell the company, work my 2 years and then what? I wanna keep working because I’m still mega excited about our company and industry. But I could do my “next thing” I don’t have a “next thing”, I love my work, 15 years in and I’m still waking up excited for the day ahead, building a company to exit means you are focused on the exit, which is fine, I’m obsessed with the work.

    Also lets be fucking honest, most of us got lucky on our first thing and somehow think we’re smart and can do it again, so we do a second thing, chasing that dopamine blast again, real talk, it never comes for most.

    Every minute you are calculating “the number”, taking meetings with VC’s or Private Equity, etc is time you are not investing in calling customers. Be careful that you don’t run around investing too much time with every tire kicker out there (I get 5 cold emails a month to talk about acquisition, I only took 1).

    Build a business, NOT an exit strategy, is another great reminder that leads to minimizing stress, you don’t have some “borrow all this money” then in 5 years I can turn it into X. It creates discipline that is like, how do I make money today or else, say no.

    Me, feeling super-powerful

    Do the work, chop the fucking wood, carry the fucking water, love the journey. If you can find a way after being “successful” to still want to chop wood and carry water, you have a superpower!! (and when combined with our old friend, “I got no debt”, you have mega super powers), and a lot of power at the negotiation table.

    There’s power in not being beat up

    I feel like an acquirer can smell a mile away an owner who is at the end of their rope and stressed out, you wanna get a big offer? Look those people across the table and smile big, between having NO debt and loving your job you are basically saying, if this offer isn’t awesome, I have zero reason to even stop this. I still love the work. If you are complaining about the people in your company, how long the days are, etc even for a second, you might see .5–1.5x knocked off of that opening offer. They know you are spent.

    Want a great offer? Find a way to love chopping the wood & love carrying the water in spite of the day to day.

    What about risk?

    If the whole company went to shit a year from today I’d have ZERO regrets. Do I see threats, you better believe I do. But I don’t live in fear of those threats. I could work somewhere and our company’s reputation ensures that my team is in a better position to get a job if this all fails as well. We’ll all be fine.

    But the kicker is that I feel like Seer is just getting started.

    What do I really value? Seeing a check, moves everything from what I’d do someday, to “oh shit” this is real.

    What is your Enough?

    On a trip about a year ago I noticed my nanny had a tattoo that says “enough” on her arm. When I asked her about it, she told me, its her reminder that she has “enough” in life. That was so simple, yet spoke so much, at 24 she got a tattoo that reminds her of something most people spend their whole lives never learning. From the moment I saw that tattoo, I started asking myself that same question.

    Worlds best nanny!

    At what point do we stop getting more just for the scoreboard of life not because getting more makes us any happier. More is so often the awards, the first class selfie on instagram, the Tesla in your garage, the organic everything in your fruit bowl to show success.

    Then I reflected…what’s enough for me? Do I already have enough? That answer was YES, before this buy out offer came it was yes.

    Go. FIND. YOUR. ENOUGH.

    Or risk falling into the trap of more, for some scoreboard that will never truly make you happy. To get to your enough when considering a sale, you need to figure out what your number is (there’s a chance you might already be at that number if your company is consistently profitable).

    Dreaming small is a superpower

    I bought my first single family house for 480k, I bought it the year Seer’s revenue was $1.05 Million, this year we’re on pace to eclipse 17 Million, 2018 20 Million, me…same house, same car. My largest expenses never went up.

    I’m not Garyvee, whom I admire many things about. I don’t want buy the Jets, and I can’t find a way to rally my company around me getting richer… Hey can you all work your asses off so I can “fly private” was hard for me to get to grips with.

    All I’ve wanted it to live comfortably, I’ve not really “leveled up” my lifestyle as my annual income went up and up and up. That is insanely powerful.

    I don’t need external validation of my success, which insulates me from the trappings of “more /get bigger”.

    I had that already. So what was the upside?

    An offer immediately made me question what mattered and now money wasn’t it, The company laid out a great offer, had amazing technology and an amazing team. I could be challenged in new ways, and their size would have enabled me to bring my vision to more CMOs across the globe. Which I would love to do. So why not sell?

    Be inspired by NO ONE, avoid the inspiration trap.

    Too many “inspiring” entrepreneurs you look up to are fucking broke.

    I can not tell you how many exits I’ve seen where someone just got debt covered, but they don’t say that. They say they got acquired for millions what you don’t know is that for 6 of 10 years they never paid themselves a dime, they have 500k in debt.

    You keep taking it in someone’s inspiration, then someday when that person fails, they stop posting as much, you don’t even notice.

    Also why are you following Gary Vaynerchuck and Richard Branson, you ain’t gonna be them, EVER! Stop following Jason Fried, you have like a .01% chance of turning your skills into building a product that millions of people have used. Find some “smaller time” people who have made exits that might actually be more like you, get inspiration from them… One of my biggest forms of inspiration, Brad Aronson, you never heard of him right, check out his site, you’ll see why he’s an inspiration. He built a company in my industry sold it and stayed grounded. That practical advice is so much better than inspiration.

    More than Money

    “Wil, you sound like a guy who is never ever going to sell” — many people have told me that, I disagree.

    I love the challenge, a new team with new goals and a new way to push me and my team to be better for our clients. I loved the technology / scale / smarts that this new team (at the company who expressed interest) could bring to Seer, and help us to be a better company.

    I love seeing my team members get more challenges, more than just the challenges I can bring @ Seer. I love to learn, and so do most people at Seer — as such seeing how someone else runs their business, could help us run ours better for ourselves and our clients.

    The day after you turn down that big money, you gotta ask yourself, was I serious?

    Who would be the right match?

    I realized that for someone to get “my baby” they’re gonna have to bring more than money and technology, they gotta bring heart. A strong desire to fight for whats right, simple things I’m looking at like equal maternity and paternity, active work on fighting the wage gap, active work on diversity initiatives, I googled and googled and googled the acquiring company’s CEO, their head of HR, and other executives and couldn't find them taking a stand somewhere to use their company as a force on topics like these.

    I think someone like Virgin, HubSpot, Salesforce (this too), or Costco (here’s why) is the type of company ethos I seek. Why? They do stuff like those examples on top of being a great company that returns shareholder value.

    None of these companies are perfect and neither are we, but at least they have leaders who strive to and seem to take real action to make this world a bit better.

    One thing I learned in this process, is Seer is big, and requires a company big enough to acquire us, so I have to rectify that reality with the fact that the types of companies who would buy us aren’t going to be small.

    What if we never find the company with the right leadership, team, technology, community impact? Then we don’t sell and I just ramp up profit distribution throughout the team.

    Tell your team

    So I gathered the team and told them all. You could feel the big exhale in the room. People were thrilled. Yet I wanted my team to now imagine the exit not as a risk or threat but as something that empowers them to have more financial freedom.

    Bringing people with me

    Well this company has always been about more than making “me” good, but making as many people as we can better off, in 2018 I’ll begin the process of diluting my 100% ownership stake and will develop a new way to share in the profits of the company with the team who’s been loyal and pushing.

    This is my next phase, while an exit would have created amazing long term wealth for me, that is the problem. It creates long term wealth for me… I have hit a point of diminishing marginal value of money (feels so weird to say). Money is only as good as the flexibility and options it provides and I have “enough” flexibility and options, and adding more to my life would have made me uncomfortable.

    So now, my journey is how can I bring others @ Seer along with me. I’m looking for the people at Seer who say we’re going to take this company from 17 Million to 30 Million in 5 years, watch us, and let those folks take a real chunk in the company that will have real value, the people who go above and beyond and show long term interest in seeing Seer succeed.

    If we can get Seer’s valuation to 40 Million…

    1 percent of the company is 400k
    A quarter of 1 percent is 100k

    Imagine if I dilute myself down to 55%, that means there’s 45% for me to distribute, at .25% increments that is 180 100k disbursements. Man, a lot of people could feel more financially secure, if we could get a few people a meaningful chunk of the business.

    I want my team to now be thinking, how can we grow this company to get there! We’ll be sharing more of our plan in the future, but I plan on also finding some way to distribute part of the profits along the way.

    The next 8–10 years of this Seer ride, should be a LOT of fun, but one where I’m not “the guy”. If I had sold the business it would be easy for me to see opportunities in a couple years to be a t-ball coach, relax a bit more in a few years, etc. So I’ve challenged Crystal to build the organization where I’m never any one person’s escalation point for anyone in the company. I need to have the flexibility to teach a class at a university if I want 1 day a week, or take a class 1 day a week (I need to learn to swim, code, and speak Portuguese), or go visit a client to show them something new I’m working on, just because it would be fun.

    Ahhh, so that is it. All the things I learned about myself in this process. It took me 3 months of aggregating notes, writing and re-writing, it required a LOT of introspection. A lot of questioning, and some really deep digging. Glad to finally ship it. Watch the space, there’s more to come.

  • No matter how much success you have you’re still a scary black man to some people.

    “You can trust me, I’m not like the other black people who ask you for your Airbnb, I have a nanny.”

    Sucks to read it, but I said it, well not in so many words. I coded it, I’m “different”, judge me if you want, sometimes you gotta use all the ammo you got.

    Thank God I’ve never considered myself “a success”…it makes the slap of discrimination sting less, which you’ll get a feel for below.

    The company I founded … we’ve been awarded awards from:
    Inc 5000     fastest growing company, Inner City 100, Philly 100 all multiple years, so I made it, right?? Not so fast.

    I speak at conferences globally, Brazil, Scotland, London, Peru, Dublin, Turkey, in the last year. So I Made it, right? Not so fast.

    My company is profitable, pretty damn profitable. I’m not on this list, but I’m doing OK, so I made it, right?. Not. So. Fast.

    In spite of all that “success” I still had someone see my photo and choose NOT to share their home with me on Airbnb. Now maybe, just maaaaybe the dude made a mistake, but this is the cognitive load of being black. Code, don’t code, hoodie up when its cold, or keep it down so you aren’t threatening, there’s a lot of mental back and forth, even for a guy like me who lives in a city and is insulated from a lot of this crap.

    My wife and I are looking for a long term Airbnb, I found an option available, it was declined. After hearing about airbnbwhileblack my radar has been up to declines on the Airbnb platform since I use them more and more.

    Recently I submitted a request for dates that were available. I got back, a simple…SORRY. That’s it, at this point most of you would move on, but I gotta stop and think, hmmmm, you said you had availability…why not now? And why has this happened 2x in the same day?

    But wait, I got all the reviews, see I’m Good!! Don’t even get me started on getting pulled over, which I have been a few times (every time I deserved it, and every time I was treated fairly to very well all by white cops).

    FAIL!!! I had received 2 rejections that day for people who had availability, we’re still holding out for the first one to see when he takes his listing down, as of right now, Airbnb is investigating and my attempt to bait one guy failed.

    So to see if this guy was discriminating or not, my wife, 24 hours later hit him up, originally asking for 2 weeks, but then asked for an extension well past my dates, which he approved (its the same chick, this guy really was slipping).

    I don’t blame the guy for rejecting, hey its probably his bias, we all have bias, but that doesn’t mean I gotta like it. This guy could have slipped and made a mistake, but I gotta wonder, hmmm is there a reason there? Maybe, maybe not, but tonight I gotta go to bed thinking…hmmm, if I was white I would have been approved by this one, and maybe the 4–5 other rejections I’ve gotten on the platform. I go to bed reminded that a lovely white woman (my wife), who has half the reviews I have, who doesn’t directly pay for our vacation rentals & who doesn’t have to code her emails to get by racial filters, got picked over me… the one people so many people call “successful”. Hmmmmm….Chris Rock said it best.

    Note: Shout out to Airbnb, your team was on the scene SUPER fast and have been amazing.

  • My HR team exposed my bias, and I’m thankful they did

    unsplash — https://unsplash.com/search/hiring?photo=fY8Jr4iuPQM

    Seer is constantly hiring, and in particularly at this time we had a REALLY sizable need. We were getting close to turning down business, our PPC team was already putting prospects on a 8–12 week start time. Our inability to hire fast was hurting our growth!

    Note: I live in complete fear of hurting our reputation by closing deals and “back filling” talent. So I’ve told the team, we have to turn away business if it means we’re going to risk reputation & referral sources by taking on something and hiring unvetted peeps.

    One of our recruiters kept an eye on my internal praise, shout outs, etc and indexed some of my perceived highest performers based on my feedback.

    Then, during a particularly intense time of hiring, I think she got sick of me dismissing people based on their resumes alone.

    I operate on a move fast and break things mentality, so I am making judgments about people & companies in seconds of viewing a resume (or about us page). For resumes, before I even read a word, I’m looking at the design, I might dismiss it based on the design alone.

    She had a hypothesis, that sometimes by running fast that I might miss out on top performers because I’m judging people too fast and don’t invest the time to take that coffee or first interview, and she was right.

    So like any data driven marketer, she ran a test. She brought me another set of resumes. This time with made up names on them, but I didn’t know that.

    As I went through each of them, she asked me to rate them on 3 criteria on a scale of 1–5, based on if I’d move them to the next round of interviews.

    Nope, Nope, Yup. I threw our 2’s — 5’s — 1’s with lightning speed. Done.

    When I finished my work in 5 minutes, she told me the actual names of the people. 2 of them were people I had been praising internally left and right, week in and week out, month in and month out. I wouldn’t have even hired them based on their resume alone. Today I rely on these people to take us to new heights.

    How could someone who I’m praising as critical to Seer’s future not have gotten an interview if I was in charge?

    Bias.

    Fast moving, heck slow moving peeps, there’s value in looking at your high performers’ resumes when they first applied. Are you getting it right? What are you getting wrong. The later is where you start to find your bias, where are you over-weighting / under-weighting factors? That will make you better at hiring.

    Other things I’ve seen to expose bias…taking names off of resumes and see a year later who you would have / would not have hired…look back at the past year. Find your bias.

    Great marketers are constantly seeking to better understand how their individual life experiences / thought patterns are getting in the way to them doing the most good for the most people.

    We challenge ourselves by looking at our wage gap, why? Because we know we have bias, and if we don’t put some data and checks to that bias we’re not doing the most good for the most people.

    Have you already overlooked that next great hire that can take you to the next level b/c you are moving so fast? That next great hire might just be in that stack of NOs from the past, put a recruiter on that, they have more time than you and just might take a coffee with that next great hire, you would have missed.

  • B2C brands…well Warby Parker & Venmo were started here, that is a start right?

    B2C brands…well Warby Parker & Venmo were started here, that is a start right? Maybe we can do something to get entrepreneurs who started here to come back for an event of some kind…

  • I was afraid to pull men vs women salary data @ my company

    Update 3/7/2018 — we’re going to update this annually, so scroll to the bottom to see our newest #’s.

    Saying you are data driven is the new thing, but I find more and more that people don’t want data, because it’s a proof point. If the data has a chance of telling you your idea sucks, do you want it? NOPE.

    Data makes you accountable, and many of us only want data that fits our world view. Public data makes you VERY accountable. So regardless of how my numbers on pay equity ended up, I decided I was going to share this post.

    I had this exact same fear about pay equity at Seer. I had ZERO idea where we would land. How can I go into the world telling clients to be “data driven” if the FEAR of pulling data on my own company was keeping me from doing the same things I ask of them?

    Here’s How It Started…

    This article came out saying that Comcast threatened to sue the city of Philadelphia over our attempt to stop employers from asking people their previous salary. Sounds like a good idea to me, since we know that asking people what they made before impacts what they get. It also continues to widen the pay gap because if someone starts off being paid less, then you asking this can perpetuate keeping them low.

    I was pissed that this got such push back, and as another Philly founder, Chris Cera, and I talked about how this was bullshit and we should do something…I got a lump in my throat.

    Those in glass houses…

    I was pissed that the Chamber and Comcast would sue to fight against the law, but had NO idea where my own company landed. So I asked Emily, our People Ops champion who leads our salary transparency initiative, to check our data. I hoped and prayed it would come back with something I could be proud of, but had no idea.

    So I prepped, what would I say to my company if the pay equity numbers were shit? This is my outline:

    Be Honest: Tell the team what the numbers are, tell them what you think about them, and share with the team what you are going to do about it.

    Be Consistent: So who cares what the number is this time, if the number is good or bad, make sure its purposeful. Swallow that pill, tell the team, and then commit to posting the numbers at a regular interval internally to let people know we aren’t running from this issue.

    Be Open / Get Support: Start asking companies, who are hitting pay equity (or desire to get there) how they manage offers, offer negotiations (get rid of them), raises, etc. There are little gems in their work that might lead you to start making an impact.

    Note: 4 years ago I wrote this and I believe that laid a groundwork and expectation for our people ops team that I didn’t want us asking salaries, not because of the gender impact, but maybe that example is what has lead us to being in an acceptable range.

    Forgive yourself: These things are NOT done intentionally, you didn’t wake up one day and say I want to pay women less for the same work. There’s bias, there’s issues that impact peoples’ pay and how they perceive pay well before they got to your company. You didn’t start the ball in motion, but looking at the data is the first step, and you owe your conscious to know that the buck stops with you!

    Celebrate: Celebrate? What if my numbers suck. You should still celebrate, why? Because now you know, you’ve shared it, and that makes you start the process. To be honest, at least your team may say…my company cares enough to look into this, and let us know where things land. Obviously if your company isn’t big enough these numbers don’t mean much, but check anyway, can’t hurt. It leads you to be purposeful.

    Create a goal: Only you can know given your population what is a range you can sleep with — 3%, 5%, 10%, 15%? Anything is a better start if you are better than the national average. Knowing is better than not knowing.

    The Data:

    More recent statistics show in 2014 that women’s median pay has increased to 79 cents, according to the Institute for Women’s Policy Research.[50]

    Luckily, I found that men at Seer only make 1% (a number I can live with, this number is obviously in a state of flux) more than women as of “Equal Pay Day” on average, and women make more than men in some of our higher experienced roles (where we had large enough sample sizes). We now can start the process of using the thoughts above to be purposeful so we never accidentally slip into a place and not even know it, or not even be in the position to stop and question ourselves. I do think that this approach to ending offer letter negotiations that I wrote about 4 years ago helps pave a path. I hope we continue to stick with that as a company (I don’t do the hiring much anymore).

    God knows, the federal government ain’t gonna do it. Comcast, I know you are working hard on your image, I love having you in this city, let’s try to fix this. It would be a great first step to have your support.

    2017: Seer men, on average, make 1% more than women
    2018: Seer women, on average, make 2% more than men

    Extra: Thank God for Execs & Friends Like This

    We’ve gone on a journey of more and more salary transparency as a company, and once you do it makes it easier to do things like this. If you want to know how we did it and how you can start to do it too, here’s a post. Emily is a DAMN PIONEER in HR, love having her with me on this push. It’s a lot of work to be transparent, it’s easy to keep shit to yourself so no one knows and no one can hold you accountable.

    I was also mega proud of this guy Sayf Sharif for writing that piece linked above, gave me more courage to write this.

    Sheryl Sandberg you continue to be the foundation for much of my inspiration on how I can try to be a great supportive husband to my wife as we both have challenging careers, which leads me to being a more empathetic manager. Keep pushing us.

    Lastly THANK YOU Chris Cera, for bringing this to my attention. I would never have thought of looking if we didn’t have that conversation.

    I Struggled to Write This

    It would be easy to flash our numbers at the top and say look at us, and how great we are, that wasn’t why I wrote this. I want this post to be about the fear of my numbers being shit, even though I would never want that to have happened, the fear of transparency and other people knowing our numbers were shit, how as companies and executives, if we’re going to be public about our beliefs and transparent, we have to push for it even in times where we aren’t happy with what we’ve built. That is why I intentionally buried our #’s and instead shared the journey.

  • Judging a company by their team page

    I recently took a look at a meet the team page, for an agency a client of ours is using, and was reminded of all the things that fire off in my head when I see those pages. Good and bad. Ours still makes me chuckle. I don’t know if its just me, but I judge companies by their “meet the team” pages. I’m maybe not the average guy anymore who is looking for a job, but I still make inferences about companies based on these pages. Here is what I find myself paying attention to when I go to a about us page:

    1 — Where is the CEO / Executive Team?

    CEO at the top of your about the “team” page? I read that as the 2000’s version of parking spots at the front reserved for execs. You’d never find that in a “progressive” company, but it seems like we have no problem doing it on our websites?

    https://www.pinterest.com/pin/142144931958897175/

    Where your executives are listed fires something off in my head. I can’t help it. If the CEO/Exec team is listed first, and everyone else is alphabetical it says something. I know a lot of people look for who are the execs, so for users it makes it easier to find the executive team. If that is important to you keep it.

    Our About us page is built to show that we don’t take ourselves too seriously, and we default to A-Z is the way to go, some day that might have to change, just like I changed my mind about titles. Page load time is getting pretty bad on that page, so maybe we’ll work on that in 2018.

    I recently took a look at a 30 person digital agency. CEO was listed in the top left (#1 spot), Exec assistant, bottom right (dead last). I could be wrong, but that is an assumption I’d make about that company, even if it is unintentional.

    2 — How white & male is the executive team?

    I’m not the biggest diversity champion, never was, not until I listened to the podcast I linked below and had this conversation with Rand Fishkin (start at 4:30). We view diversity differently, FYI.

    Rand Fishkin — Pioneers of Company Culture

    Rand, wrote up a great piece on intentional diversity after this, worth a read for sure.

    CMOs are starting to say more and more, things like this:

    Pepsi CMO, Brad Jakeman recently said… “I am sick and tired as a client of sitting in agency meetings with a whole bunch of white straight males talking to me about how we are going to sell our brands that are bought 85% by women,” he said. “Innovation and disruption does not come from homogeneous groups of people.”

    When I see all the executives looking like this I think does this agency/company believe that diverse groups make better products/decisions for their customers/businesses? Take a listen at the podcast (start at 12 minutes) that changed my mind about diversity, if you dig it follow Leslie Miley!

    So what is the solution?

    I don’t think there is one, companies with hundreds of thousands of employees can’t list everyone, I think its not a problem to be solved. Its more important to know how some applicants, partners, etc might look at your company based on clues from your website including your about us page. So it comes down to what do you want to communicate about your organization, and how you list people communicates something, just take a sec to make sure what you want to communicate represents what you believe.

  • False Perks & the email you aren’t sending but need to

    So I’m on a train, hustling, banging out emails chatting with clients, you know the usual.  But, today we have off.  That is a problem.

    Execs often build perks in their companies that they actually want people to take, but when YOU don’t take them, it makes people feel nervous about taking them. The more innovative your perks, the more likely people haven’t seen them before. I know it’s weird, but guess what? Its real.  I’ve been in my company so long that the concept of a false perk is completely foreign. For a lot of folks that is NOT the case.

    When you have days off, or you are working on the weekends and you TRULY don’t want people feeling like “oh the boss emailed me, so I have to respond” you have to send out an email like this:

    It signals to your company that you are confirming that you actually want people to take the time off.  The higher up you are in the org, the MORE important these emails are. Why?

    Because it signals to your execs and managers that they should respect people’s time off / perk usage. It lets people in lower positions of power, say…well the CEO said, or my Director said. It empowers people from interns on up to push back on managers not living the values, it gives them a little cover to say “hey I’m confused, you were working on XYZ day, and expected me to answer but [EXECUTIVE A] send this out.

    Remember you have to send these REGULARLY!!  In any fast growing company, you are bringing on so many people so fast that you’ll feel like you’ve said it 10,000 times, so say it 10,001. Before you blink 25% of your company wasn’t even here for the last time you emailed that out.

    Move your seat

    Crystal, our company President leaves often for kid duty, she is not in the office at 4:30 most days, when she is off, she is OFF (usually). That sends a great signal to the company.  I also advocate for execs moving their seats regularly so more of the company can see you living it out your perks, if you stay on the same floor, then those people know you live out your perks, but the rest of the company doesn’t see it. Thx hubspot for the tip.

    Force other execs to do it

    Crystal sat me down and said Wil, you have to pick at least 6 fridays this summer where you leave the office for Seer’s “Summer Hours” she said its important for people to see you take them this year, so I did.  I scheduled 6-8 lunch dates with my son at a park near the office.  And while many times, I ended up playing with him for 30-60 minutes before he wanted to nap, I GOT OUT, and worked from home instead.  

    Track the people who don’t use vacation

    The big “trap” of unlimited vacation is that people don’t take it.  Which is why I was so stoked one day when Sayf Sharif our Analytics director build a conditionally formatted sheet that tracks who has been working w/o taking vacation…he even went so far as to say, I expect you to take at least X weeks…so by the end of the month, if you are less than X, you must fill out days you plan on taking off by the end of the year.  (He did this after only being in the company for 3 months, it was great to see).

    Another important thing to do…make your managers approve a minimum % of vacations, so you don’t have a “perk” that people in lower positions of power feel are false.

    2 inconvenient truths about getting a late night email

    #1 – I like it. I know its a contradiction, but its the truth.

    Being an exec is lonely, working on that proposal, budget, launch in the wee hours, when you know almost everyone else is sleeping is lonely.  There are times, when that email comes in late at night or on the weekend that says “Man, this person has got my back, it’s not just me out here.”  That feels good sometimes.  I know it contradicts much of what I said above, but it feels good sometimes and that is the truth . No one likes to feel alone, no one. Including execs. Sometimes that late night email is just the fuel needed.  I’ll figure that out someday, but for now it is a sad truth of how it feels.

    #2 I Unapologetically love my work

    The last thing I’ll say is I unapologetically love my job. Therefore work on the weekends and nights is often, as weird as this might be for most…fun.  The feeling that I’m working while others are sleeping, or balancing work / life in their way is a bit addicting.  

    I get off on doing the hard shit, others say they want and quit on the path to doing.  

    If you are one of these people and find yourself working in a company that is saying “hey don’t work on days off” tell your manager!  Its ok to say, hey I appreciate it, I really do, but I’m a muthafuckin’ hustler, and a big girl…so I know when I need a break. That signals to your manager that you are one of us, the rare breeds who get more energy most times off of doing the hard work, and that drive for doing the hard work is important enough to you, that you don’t even think about the weekends as time to recharge, you see it as just another day to slay some shit. 

    Just don’t expect others to do the same, that isn’t fair, if it goes against the perks you’ve built.

  • 7 conversation starters to move your role from execution partner to strategic consultant

    I’ve had several conversations with people at Seer now that I run strategy where they ask me how to become more strategic, I took that advice and put it together here.

    First question to ask yourself is:

    Does my client / manager see me as a consultative strategist, or an execution partner?

    Note: Execution partners are key to driving results, never get too far from that while seeking to improve your consulting skills, your UBER X driver is an execution partner…they help you get from location A to B, and if that is a job interview or a big pitch, it’s critical to be there on time, it may not be strategic but it’s critical.

    Anyone can talk, not everyone can back it up, always seek to be strong on execution!

    Anyway with that caveat said…if you are wondering if your client / manager sees you as a thought partner do they ask you questions like these?

    Here are sample “sights and sounds” I’ve seen when clients saw someone as a thought partner:

    • What am I not seeing coming down the pike that could impact the results we have?
    • How do our numbers stack up against competitors?
    • What am I not asking of you to do for us that I should be?
    • Should I consider solving this problem with another team?
    • Can I have a strategy session with you? I’d like to discuss more than the day to day. I have a BIG idea/challenge I want your optics on.
    • What else does your agency do that could help us?
    • Even if you don’t have skill xyz in house, I’d like you to manage the other consults we hire.
    • Note: if you are being managed by a consultant, you are the execution partner.
    • I have XYZ left in my budget, how might you recommend we spend it?
    • I heard about trend ABC, how would that impact me, how do I hedge against that, do you think its a risk for me?
    • If I took all my budget and gave it to you instead of other partners, what do you think you could do for me?
    • How big of a risk is this? Should I prioritize this in Q1, Q2, etc? Is this a 2017, 18, or 19 problem?
    • Can you help to connect these day to day tasks with our larger vision?

    If you have read these questions and are thinking, I haven’t been asked these and I want to be more consultative & seen as more of a consultant. Here is the secret about getting questions like these:

    The secret is that it was never executing what I was asked to do that made my clients think of me as a strategic thought partner, I had to show them something real that challenged their daily reality that made them think of me as more than the guy they hired for whatever task they thought they needed me to do.

    The three ingredients you need to level up in that strategic consultant / thought partner level are:

    1 — Opinions You have to be ok taking data making an opinion and saying to your client / manager, I might be wrong, but I believe (stress the word believe) that (blah blah blah).

    2 — Never lose sight of the goal Understanding your clients true goal, be careful of confusing the outputs (tasks) you are doing with the outcome (why you are performing those tasks).

    3 — Downside — Protect their downside on your big ideas, always find a cheap way to test, get data, refine, then go big.

    With those three things, you can start asking questions like the ones below to start your client thinking of you more and more as a thought partner and an execution partner. Remember even if they say no, they will think of you differently.

    Find a trend in their space and prepare a high level 5 steps to prepare for said trend:

    We haven’t talked (trend) yet I’m seeing in your data, that (percentage) of your (task goal) could be impacted by (trend), which could long term have a (percentage) impact on (revenue goal). As such I’ve prepared an (duration) road map on how we can tackle this growing trend. If it remains at (percentage growth YoY), I believe (duration) works. However, if (percentage growth YoY) goes to (stretch number) then we should (accelerate/decelerate) our time investment in (trend) by x (months/quarters/years). Can I spend 5–10% of my time investigating this for you?

    IRL message I’d send (given I’m in search marketing):

    Hi Rich, we haven’t talked about answer boxes in search results yet, but I’ve put together an analysis that shows the impact to your traffic looks to be about 20%, which could ultimately impact your revenue via this channel by 10%, meaning you’d miss your annual goals. Here is a 12 month road map, that shows how with 2–3 hours a month we can start to understand the problem, monitor it, and take some small steps to address them. If for some reason this percentage jumps to 30% or more (which we will be monitoring) we might want to accelerate this schedule to 9 months to take advantage of these moves early. I’m recommending to all clients to take me up on 2–3 hours of work to take a look this month.

    Find another channel that if invested in could accelerate revenue:

    I know you’ve hired us for (service), but I’m looking at the entire landscape of ways to hit your (goal) and believe that an investment in (other channel) could get you to (goal) (x percent) faster. If it were me, I’d double down on (other service) cutting back (my service) by (percentage) for (months/quarters), may I spend 3 hours this month with one of my colleagues in (other service) to see if my gut is right?

    IRL message I’d send (given I’m in search marketing):

    Hi Jenn, I know you’ve hired us for SEO, but I’m looking at recent changes with Google and realizing we’ve lost more organic real estate. That has to have an impact on organic’s ability to hit your goal this year, to be honest I think us taking a look at your paid search opportunities could help us hit your overall goal by October this year instead of eeking it out in December. I’d invest more of my time in finding ways for SEO to help PPC, which means I’m going to have to cut back a few hours/month on SEO tasks, to help bolster my PPC teams efforts. I think if I can do this for the next 2 quarters, we’ll be in a position to pick back up on SEO 100%, instead of my suggested 50% for the next 6 months. Can I spend 3 hours with my PPC team to see if the opportunity is as big as I think?

    Looking forward / needing more investment:

    What would you need to see from me in (duration) that would make you double down on your investment in us? What data points would be an early indicator to make you reconsider in 6 months?

    IRL message I’d send (given I’m in search marketing):

    Hi Bart, before we get started on this project, I’d love to see in your opinion what would you need to see in month 6 to make you want to double your investment with us? Also what would make you cut it at month 6? I want to build an early warning system so that if we are not on pace to hit the goal you and I both know it and can have the conversation early, and build a plan B.

    Explain an execution risk:

    In my opinion, based on my experience and the experiences of (my team/manager) who have seen (number) of projects just like this one, even on our best day if you and I are committed to moving heaven and earth for (project x) we have a (percentage) change of failure if we don’t get (department/person) on board. How could you and I work together to make them part of the solution at the onset, so we can realize (x impact) in (y time).

    If we get to (duration) and we don’t have (percentage) impact, I’m going to be looking to pivot (project) into areas (a,b,c) where you and I have a greater sphere of influence, which would likely result in an impact of (x) instead of our initial project of Y).

    IRL message I’d send (given I’m in search marketing):

    Hi Crystal, I have gotten with 3 colleagues (including my director) who have seen 50 projects just like ours to ask them what makes projects like these successful and what makes them fail, given what I know about your goals and your business climate internally. I know you and I are extremely committed to the success of this project, you and I also know that we need others to care as much as we do to be successful. If we don’t get everyone on board in the design and UX departments, this project is highly likely to stall, even with our full efforts and the best of intentions, how might we get them involved? My manager and colleagues have given me these 5 recommendations that they have seen work in the past, let me know which one or ones you think would work for us, and I’ll get on crafting the documents, trainings, and presentations.

    While we are best intentioned, I want to put on my calendar a “line in the sand” on execution risk. I believe that if at 5 months we have not hit the following 3 milestones, that we would have gone from an 80% likelihood to a 30% likelihood of hitting your goals of 3 million in revenue by Q3. As such, if we don’t, my plan B is to at that time do the following 4 things, which are less impactful, but more within our sphere of influence, so while I need everything to work out right to get that 3 Million, I think if we run into execution roadblocks we can get to 2.3 Million of that 3 with these other tactics you can I have more control over.

    Realizing “full universe”:

    Based on my experience & research, if we keep growing at (x), we’re likely to start hitting peak market share attainment, I have confirmed with (number) colleagues (or read x paper) who confirm that in the (x) industry, that is a reasonable expectation. Given current trends we are projected to realize that ceiling in the next (months/quarters/years). I recommend I spend (x) percent of my time, sniffing out new opportunities as the marginal value of (current thing I am doing) should start to dry up and not get the lift it once did, and I want to make sure we still are on pace to attain (goal x) set by the executive team. I can get started on this in 6 weeks if we approve this week. I’ll give you more details, just getting a temp check on this concept.

    IRL message I’d send (given I’m in search marketing):

    Hi Sara, I have done some digging and if we keep growing at 120% we’re probably going to start running into fewer and fewer opportunities at the current ROI we’re driving. I’ve done my digging across the web, and spoken with a few execs here at Seer who have come across this issue before. When I ran my projections by them they agreed that there is a chance we could start topping out our impact in the next 18–24 months. I’d love to spend 10 hours this month finding new opportunities, we’ve already hit goal for the year of 2 Million in revenue, and its 3 months to go till your fiscal year. The marginal value of getting 10 links a month just doesn’t seem to be paying the dividends they did when we started 3 years ago, I want to make sure we start planning for the changes to come next fiscal year, so we can have a game plan to hit goal for that year. Can I deploy that 10 hours and return to you what I found & my recommendations?

    Show them a new reality that destroys current reality

    I know you asked me to do (task) and to hit (tactical goal), I’ve attained that (x) (months/quarters/years) in a row. However in that time I haven’t had time to research (trend), and did you know that while I’ve been hitting your (tactical goal) I’ve been ignoring (bigger trend). Who is watching your back on the rise of (consultative opp)? May I work with them (or run it myself), to spend x% of my time this (month/quarter) to build a plan to help us take advantage of (new reality). I believe that even if I get (x) more of (tactical goal) the marginal value of that is smaller than the (wide open field) that (competitor 1,2,3) are not even seeing. I feel that we’ll have (months) to take advantage before all the others wise up.

    IRL message I’d send (given I’m in search marketing):

    Hi James, I know you asked me to work on improving quality scores in our biggest spending categories, as a way of helping us to hit goals for the year. I’m glad to report that for 4 months in a row within our top 5 campaigns, all keywords have quality scores over 7!! I could continue to do that work, and I know it would be fruitful, however we haven’t discussed the impact that app packs are having on our mobile traffic at all in the last 4 months, and I believe that with 4 months in a row of refinement on campaign quality score improvements, the time has come to spend some REAL time on some risks I see for the business. We’ve been ignoring this trend, and to be honest I think the lift we’ve gotten in QS isn’t as great as the lift we could be getting if I invested that same time in optimizing your app rankings on mobile.

    Is anyone watching this at your company or is this report new to you?

    I’m prepared to make the case and run the analysis to show the impact if you are game for me pivoting this months time. Our top search competitors do not seem to be noticing this trend yet either (that on mobile 32% of all results are showing app packs), now is the time to strike, our competition won’t be asleep at the wheel forever. We have 6–12 months before I think they’ll start playing with this too, lets get a jump on them before they even know what hits them, let them keep obsessing over the wrong metrics, we’ll be working on where things are going. I may have to bring in a consultant or two to help us execute, but for now I just want to pull the data and rate the risk and build a gameplan to make sure this pivot is worth the risk. The data I pulled shows that if this continues to happen, 75% of the traffic that drives conversions today will be unattainable by 2019. Rendering this channel ineffective. I felt I owed it to you to let you know that if I keep doing what I’m asked, I think we’re facing a MAJOR risk.

    Show them you are studying outside of your day to day:

    I’m really into (tangential skill that impacts project). Today I got certified in XYZ. I know it isn’t part of our project, but I’m willing to put in some extra hours (on me) to see if with my new skills in (x) I can find (y) ways to help you hit goals for the year and drive a wedge between you and your competitors for next year (they won’t even see this change coming), look at the attached examples of them (and us missing this opportunity). I believe that (current project) drives more value when (tangential skill) + (new skill) are brought together. I have already found these 3 ways that you can get more value from (current project) by integrating the two. We’re currently on pace to hit goal by (x date) I think if we can execute on these we can speed that up by (timeframe).

    IRL message I’d send (given I’m in search marketing):

    Kim, howdy! I’ve been really into the issue of how users go from the search engine to our client sites. I recently became certified in UX by the Nielsen Norman Group to better be able to bridge expectations of users with what we deliver. I truly believe this is a big miss by our industry, and with Google understanding better and better how users interact with search results, I think it is more important than ever for us to ensure that our top rankings are reliable for you to make forecasts on for years to come, or we could lose those rankings, not due to lack of content or links, but due to lack of understanding of what truly solves the users problem when they search for Hospice in California. I don’t want to stall our current project one bit, so I’m going to be going full bore with our plans, but wanted to know if on nights and weekends when I get some extra time to see my my new human factors skills can help you both with SEO but also to help ensure we are satisfying users.

    Like I said before, I believe in the long term, Google will only get stronger (not weaker) at understanding if a top ranking truly solves a problem and that is why I got this certification. I’ve chatted with my managers and they’re behind me 100%, I’m asking my clients if we can start to put some time to future proofing their projects. Here are 3 examples of issues I found when I spoke to users looking to schedule an appointment with someone, I think if we fixed those, not only could we get more revenue from the traffic we’re already driving, but we’re also protecting those rankings for the future. This will not distract us from our goal of 70 leads per month, if anything it can help us get more, I project 77–82 leads per month as a result of this work, helping us to BLOW out the goal and to maybe hit your stretch goal for the year. While focusing on an area your competitors aren’t, setting us up for next year, which again Google will only be stronger at than they are this year.

    Hope I got you thinking, here are 3 more fill in the blanks that I was going to delete but they just might help someone so I’m gonna leave em. 🙂

    I want to get to know your customer better

    I’m a better advocate for your and your customer if I understand them better. My tools (x,y,z) are great at telling me (thing), but they don’t give me the qualitative answers that would help me have more understanding of the bigger issue. May I spend x% of my time this (month/quarter) on (sales calls, UX rebuilds, customer support calls)?

    Explain a cross functional opportunity:

    I was reviewing your data and think there might be a larger opportunity for you to get more from the investment you are already making with us. Do you mind telling me if (channel x) is performing for you as well as it appears in the data?

    Make a 3 year projection:

    Over the next 3 years, I expect the investment you are making our work should have y dividends.I’ve built a chart that shows what we need to hit each month in (data point) to get to the 3 year goal your (executive) is seeking.

    Originally published at wiltesthome.wpcomstaging.com.

  • How Confused is your Team? Find out in 30 secs.

    A wise man, Geoff Wilson once shared with me, the easiest way to determine if your team is completely confused about who to go to in times of uncertainty. He said usually when your team is confused on who to go to, they will send an email to more than 1 exec / and don’t call out which exec is needed to make a call. This happens most in companies who move fast, people get promoted fast, and re-orgs happen every few years.

    I don’t have partners at my company but at Geoff’s, they do. And he knew they needed clear lines of which person to go to, he used email to snuff out the times when it wasn’t clear.

    Does your team send out messages like this to your exec team:

    Hey Folks, blah blah blah happened, what should I do?

    When that happens it means they don’t have a clear line of sight as to who should be their main problem solver.

    It’s not their fault they don’t have a clear path, it’s yours.

    Here are email openings that are emailed to a group of leaders where your team doesn’t know which one makes the decisions:

    “team”
    “hey guys”
    “exec team”
    “Person1 & Person2”
    or email to a managers list, exec list with a specific problem but not pointing to a specific person to respond.

    Diffusion of responsibility

    The larger your company gets, the less inclined people are to help when someone asks.

    More broadly, anytime you email a list in a growing company with hey guys, team, etc, you are begging to not get a response, because everyone thinks someone else will get to it, it’s human nature. Its the bystander effect.

    The minute I was told this I started cataloging every time it happened, it’s so easy to see. That small piece of advice has made me HYPER cognizant just by looking in the to line, I can assess where our company may not be giving people really clear direction.

    A confused team, works more slowly, they are unsure of next steps, and who to go to, so where you can snuff that out, you should, your team will thank you for it.

    Go forth and name the people you specifically need help from, I bet you’ll get more responses, and much faster.

    And if you can help me, I’d love examples of how companies have broken larger companies/teams into smaller ones to help minimize diffusion of responsibility.

  • How I Practice Resilience for the unknown trying times ahead.

    I’m an impatient guy, and at times that propels me to do great things, but like most things that are great on one end, they are a handicap on the other. One day, I decided to practice patience. I didn’t allow myself to walk pass anyone, sure enough I got stuck behind people and I wouldn’t allow myself to walk around them, I just walked behind them…slowly. It was painful.

    I was practicing, when you want to interrupt or speed up a conversation w/ a co-worker, learn to sit, listen, wait.

    I am the proud dad of a newborn boy. I hate the sound of kids crying, always have. I’ve practiced listening to his crying so much, that when it's his turn to cry on a plane, I don’t even feel that pressure of trying to shut him up. I mean I try to, but my anxiety doesn’t go up. Whereas I see parents who are the super apologetic & get worked up in such a tizzy that they just pass that anxiety right on the the kid, I’m able to stay cool, calm, collected…why?

    I practiced dealing with a situation before I had to do it.

    Me and my son, classing it up, up front.

    So I got a great chance to practice this recently, an 8 hour flight from Barcelona to Philadelphia, my wife and I got 1 upgrade, I decided to take it…and take him…nothing like sitting in business class with 16 people who hate you for bringing a 1 year old up. I had my son for about 4 of the 8 hours of the flight. I got a lot of stares, I also got to practice being disliked and not in control of a situation.

    Someday that will help me get through something tougher, sitting there, knowing you are disliked for 8 hours.

    People ask me to speak all over, yet I wanted to practice taking the spotlight off myself, and improve at asking questions, Listening, asking deeper questions. I decided to have an event on company culture, where I was the interviewer, not the speaker. I want to become a better facilitator, getting stories and opinions out of others. I think I did OK, I have a lot of work to do, but it has made me better at asking questions.

    The inspiration for this post comes from the time when I was taken aback because I got this email from a CEO I had never met before after interviewing 2 of his team mates.

    Yes, I did offer to pay people to interview, because I was asking a LOT in the interview and wanted to show them I respected their time.

    So If you know anything about me, you know my first thought was:

    F**K this Mo*******ker, you ain’t my daddy!!

    Then I breathed, and thought…I’m deleting the freaking email, stay positive and don’t get dragged into the crap.

    Then it hit me, don’t delete this email, respond, this was an opportunity to practice resilience once again.

    I could call this person and try to stay calm the whole time, never raising my voice. It was a RARE opportunity for me to practice staying 100% calm with someone who was irate with me vs giving it back to them. I haven’t had to take that kind of abuse since I was a server in college.

    So I wrote down 7 questions I was going to ask, since I want to practice asking questions / listening better, this was a chance to do that with someone who was irate. I decided to ask the following questions, totally inquisitive, not one ounce of anger in my voice, as that is exactly what I wanted to practice.

    So I asked questions like:

    • Help me to understand, are you asking me to join a pact with a group of people I don’t know?
    • Do you typically join pacts with people you don’t know, who send you strongly worded emails?
    • You know you are asking me to do something illegal for someone I have never met, right?
    • So tell me, if you are in my position and you have a client who is expanding, you’d want me to turn that business away to preserve a business relationship with you while risking the relationship with my client. How do you manage that issue?

    And on and on. I’ll spare you the details, but needless to say, the person very quickly went into “I’m not a bad person Wil” style apologies. Yeah whatever man.

    I used him. I used him to make me better. He was my practice.

    Anyway I share these four anecdotes to remind you that sometimes, take the things that are against your typical behavior and DO IT, practicing patience, speaking up, quieting down, whatever it is, use the things that piss you off as opportunities to learn how to control your own communication shortcomings. Be ready for gametime, and the best way to do that is with practice.