Wil Reynolds

Blog

  • Rich & Sad

    “NO such thing as a life that is better than yours, no such thing, no such thing.”
    — J. Cole.

    One of the most profound statements in my 23 year professional career came from a client who sold to Alibaba — in a pretty big deal, all over crunchbase etc etc. Millions — he was the founder / CEO so I was at the highest levels of the biz.

    Me: “Congrats man, what a ride!”
    Him: “Wil, sometimes it is better to own a lot of something small then to own a little of something big, I gotta run.”

    That hit me, hard. This man just sold for “likely low 9 figures” and had a significant ownership stake — this was the FIRST thing he thought to say to me days after? Damn.

    I shared that with Alex Hillman recently to which he replied,
    “there’s a lot of people out there Rich and Sad.”

    Got me thinking even harder. There’s a lot of Rich & Sad out there behind the facade. Alex went on to say, “Anytime someone sells their business, my first question is “are you OK, not congratulations.”

    Happy on social, sad in real life

    I was listening to a podcast about “van life” today and how much it sucked for someone who tried it, wait what, it sucked? But the awesome photos, the dropping the 9–5, the waking up every day to do what you want, how could that not be dope? Look. At. This. Life.

    My morning, was boooooring.

    The author talked about how it looks on vanlife tiktok and she described how that was what she expected, but the reality was a lot of skuzzy bathrooms, flat tires, really bad sleep, feeling like she couldn’t breathe in humid days(bad AC), rainy days, lack of showering, etc, etc.

    This broadly gets me thinking of one J. Cole song I love, called Love Yourz — watch the lyrics video, but this line gets repeated a lot.

    Start vs Finish (Getting married vs staying married)

    Something else constantly on my mind is the start vs the finish.

    When is the last time you were at a huge celebration of family members, likely a wedding right? 2 people committing to a life together starting today, lets send them off and throw a huge party, right?

    Did you throw a big party on their 5th year of STAYING together, shocking how much effort and money we spend to send people off day 1, but on day 3,000 of being together, you send some happy anniversary cards. I wanna live in a world where we praise staying together cause staying together is hard.

    Start vs Finish (Business edition)

    I have a few companies whom I track, they are often written up in the press for raising money or moving into their new offices for expansion. The CEO’s typically are quoted with what they expect to happen over a few years.

    Once a year I get the emails come back into my inbox, just to see where are they now, and how many of their interview stats played out?

    There’s a lot of people out there saying “we’re going to triple in 3 years” who grow 50% in 3 years — which to me is still worth celebrating, but it does make me reflect how we entrepreneurs say a lot of stuff that never happens (Hey Elon, still waiting for my car to drive itself).

    Are we putting out the highlights like “we’re going to grow revenue by 500% in 5 years” but no one holds us accountable to “did you actually do that?”. Where are the year 1, 2, 3 check in stories that start off like “Last year you said you were going to double headcount in 5 years, are you on pace?”

    Contentment — Try it on for size

    The world is telling us to do something different, start something new, get bigger, buy stuff, sell stuff — try to keep doing the same thing in those moments and try to find a new joy in the same old.

    Every day I wake up, lace my shoes up, and I am reminded that there’s no such thing as a life that is better than mine, so I don’t seek one, I’ve felt this way pretty much every day for the last 20 years — and I’ve only had 1 day in 20 years I didn’t want to come to work, but that story is for another time.

  • The case for Manager Branding vs Employer Branding

    Yeah, we’ve all heard that one and most of us believe it, but how many of us have flipped it?

    “Employees aren’t attracted to companies, they are attracted to managers.”

    Sure companies matter a ton! A company provides the environment for a manager to operate within. But what about manager’s role? I, as CEO, make the environment — but the daily execution of those guardrails is in the hands of managers.

    Ever have a great brand to work on, but a horrible point of contact?

    I’ve had TONS of client brands that were GREAT, but the point of contact we worked with stunk, right? How did I feel about the brand after that experience? Ever have that client point of contact leave and suddenly the project was great all of a sudden? Yup. So it’s not just about the company it’s about the people in the company, right?

    I was getting ready to post a job on LinkedIn and thought, maybe it’s just noise, that is what inspired me to post this and reflect on who we are & are not built for.

    Wil Reynolds on LinkedIn: Before posting another "We're hiring" link let me tell you who I am | 50…
    Before posting another "We're hiring" link let me tell you who I am trying to build this company for and who we need to…www.linkedin.com

    Consider posting why someone should work with YOU as the manager, what value do you add to their career / life. What is your manager brand?

    Try to finish this sentence, at least 50% of the people whom I managed have gone on to do ___________. Saying things like that shape your manager brand.

    How many of you have ever written up and articulated why someone should work in your organization with YOU. What value will YOU (the applicant) gain by working with ME. Not the company, ME.

    As a CEO my job is to create an environment to make it easy for manager to thrive, but ultimately the execution varies manager to manager.

    Individual managers might need management brands. (I hate personal branding, FYI), but as a manager there’s real value in sitting in an interview and articulating why working with YOU drives value for them.

    If there are 30 middle managers in your company, why should someone be on YOUR team. Not at the company, but with YOU. Imagine if we let the front line workers take the power back and they could choose any manager they wanted, how would you recruit for your team? What would you say? What is your track record, where are you an inflection point for people?

    Let me go first — this is my manager brand

    • I build teams who do things for the first time, we take raw materials that maybe others see but don’t refine into value and turn them into new things on the hope we create value.
    • I have no problem looking at my failures honestly, but we don’t make excuses — you will learn that vulnerability is a safety blanket, it’s attractive more than you’ve been told, and I’ll be modeling it for you daily.
    • We’re going to be humble, when we win we get back to work. (We’ve won inc 5000 7 or 8 times, I don’t post about it, win awards whatever, get back to work).
    • I move roadblocks for you to see just how good you / your strategies are — wanna see how good you are, join my team.
    • Be willing to accept that as I remove those roadblocks, if you aren’t as good as you thought, that is OK lets work on leveling you up, but we don’t make excuses.

    • You will have a LOT of flexibility / with that comes a lot of accountability — you will learn to embrace your mistakes / shortcomings as part of growing.
    • You will learn a lot because I read a lot and challenge my default thinking a lot, it’s how I grow — so expect that I’ll challenge your thinking.

    My job is to make it easy for you to do the right thing

    • You will level up your data skills, presentation skills, and critical thinking skills, work with me and you’ll likely be better at pitching clients to take action than you were before you worked with me
    • You’ll make mistakes here as making mistakes is on the path to greatness — My latitude for mistake making is SUPER high, make sure you are protecting my back so we don’t make fatal mistakes.
    • You’ll be a better human — I want to build better humans and I’ll always lead by example.
    • Your network will grow exponentially — My network is massive and how I operate means a lot of people are willing to do a favor for me, often times that means you get access to people 1:1 that you usually only see on stage. I can use that network to get you your dream client or dream industry, get you on stage, get your beliefs out to the world — fast.
    • Pride — Ultimately, I wanna give you something you built that when our time is over you can look back and your impact was UNDENIABLE and it was impactful to this business and it’s goals.
    • Exhausting — I’m not good at long term scalability, working with me is TURBULENT because of that, if you get tired working with me it’s going to be because I’m always changing stuff and that can get old.
    • Too Fast — I am impatient that has major pros and cons, know thyself.
    • Bad pacesetter — I work on vacations, this job is a hobby for me — I delay send all my emails so I don’t expect you to, but it makes me a bad pacesetter at times — don’t try to keep pace, this is a hobby I don’t need to get away from it.

    This is what I bring, wanna know what my team thinks of working with me?

    What would your brand be as a leader??

    Imagine if your boss said to you, today I’m letting everyone pick their manager at our company, what would your pitch be? How much time have you put into thinking about that pitch, could you give it right now?

    Before you jump in watch this video, and yes you will cringe — you gotta look within, that’s where all growth starts.

  • Finding Mentors: Do you want to feel better or get better?

    I read this passage in Thinking in Bets about creating a group that was built to make each other better at poker.

    When one player brought up how unlucky they had gotten, another would nod in assent as a prelude to telling their own hard-luck story, which, in turn, would be nodded at and assented to by the group.

    I saw Erik during a break in a tournament, and started moaning to him about my bad luck in losing a big hand…he laid out all the elements of a productive group charter. “I don’t want to hear it…if you have a question about a hand, you can ask me about strategy. I just don’t think there’s much purpose in a poker story if the point is about something you had no control over,,,the rules of being in a pod with him. He discouraged me from confirmatory or biased thought like “I got unlucky.” He encouraged me to find things I might have control over and how to improve decisions about those.

    You need to constantly re-evaluate your circle as you grow. Do you wanna feel better or get better? You need to be honest with yourself about that, then ask yourself what is the right mix. Then evaluate the group of people you bring your work or life problems to. You might need to rebalance your advice portfolio.

    The types of people around you are likely a mix of 4 types of people, lets assume you are in a “woe is me / this business stuff is tough” spiral.

    Type 1: The cheerleader / comforter

    When you talk about life being hard, this person tells you how successful you already are. Some days when you are really down on yourself you might need this person, but don’t get it twisted when you look back they never bring you new ways of thinking, their intent is to help you feel better. The things you’ll hear from a cheerleader will make you feel good but might also make you overconfident.

    Outlook: The world is happening to you. It’s unfair, and we all hope it gets better. Person XYZ is the problem.

    Credit

    Type 2: The listener

    Like the cheerleader, they want you to feel better and while they might not go with “you are crushing it” they listen a lot, they nod heads and maybe offer some advice but the advice is going to be couched in a soft delivery vs a “get your head out of your ass” approach. Keep in mind this person will make you feel great after a session. They might spend real time listening to you, but they likely haven’t contemplated that maybe you suck, and that is why you are in the position you are.

    Outlook: You might just need to talk this through with someone, I’m here to listen and help you vent / get it off your chest. I’ll make you feel heard. They won’t hold you accountable

    Credit

    Type 3: The relationship tester

    People who have advice hate giving it and spending time with people who don’t take it, so this advisor will give you a bit of their time as a test. They don’t take your calls same day, ever. It’s likely a week or more. This person is likely a deep thinker and when you bring them issues they will spend time thinking about helping you get out of that rut, that is a GREAT thing. They will give advice from a distance, but aren’t likely to dig in too deep (at least not at first).

    This type of person is out there but you gotta be asking for feedback and telling them you actually want it and want to change. This person probably gets asked by 10 people a week for their time so they want to find the 1 or 2 worth pouring real time into vs even distribution for 10 people. They can also see when you spiraling / struggling, but they might see telling you that you are spiraling as “too much work” so they might give you things to read or a quick 15 minute meeting to chat it out…next week.

    Outlook: I have a lot of people asking me for advice, I want to protect my time while helping so I’m giving advice to people for whom I feel it is helpful. If you show progress — I’ll give more time, and maybe move to the next type. I’m going to ask questions to see if you are taking our chats seriously and making moves, I’ll ask a couple times and hold you accountable.

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    Type 4: The trainer

    A trainer shows up every day you show up, they are there with you during every rep, but they never lift your weights for you. They will spot you at best. They are here to kick your ass a bit, they can be a cheerleader some days and they can be a drill sergeant others. A great trainer will find a time when you are slacking and say “look if you don’t want to put in the work, don’t waste my time.” And they mean it.

    This (to me) is the holy grail as we all need people around us in tough times who give it to us straight and they are going to put in the time to help us dig out of the rut (spotting us on that 10th rep). The “putting in the time part” and being willing to give hard advice are what make these people stand out.

    Credit

    When is the last time someone gave you really hard advice you didn’t want to hear? Like really stop and reflect? Then ask yourself when is the last time someone told you how great you are doing, how successful you are, etc? They will embody all the other 4. That is what makes them great they celebrate with you when you are crushing it and help you dig out when you are getting crushed.

    I only have had 1 advisor like this in 20 years of running my biz. They will take your call at 8pm, 8am, EST, PST, GMT, never matters. FYI his book is one way for him to scale this approach (he’s also a type 3 for many others).

    Steve has said things to me like:

    • “No one in your company understands where you are taking it, want me to go ask the first 15 people I see in your office today?”
    • “Send me your financial statements monthly so I can stay in rhythm with your business which means when you call me for help I’ll be in flow”
    • “I’ll manage your offsites this year (he did for 7 years) and be provocative with you/your leaders…”
    • “leader ABC over division 123 is sharp, are you incentivizing them appropriately, lets go over that next week ok?”
    • “When are you visiting that M&A Firm? Me: in 6 days, Him: OK I’ll take a red eye to be there by your side during those talks. Heck lets meet for breakfast across from their offices and gameplan before, I’ll just stay at the airport hotel, shower, gameplan and get back on the 1st flight out.”
    • “If you talk to me about something on glassdoor one more time! That site is an anonymous platform, it’s the bathroom wall at the truck stop and you can’t shake what anonymous people are writing about you, come on.”
    • “I see how you are talking about XYZ online, I don’t think that is productive to your goals.”

    Outlook: Like Type 3, I have very little time, but I’m going to double down with you, that might mean 3–4 times a year I give you advice you might not want to hear but need to hear. If you fight me on it over and over I might learn something, but if you are just making excuses and not progressing, I’m slowly going to be out. I’ve already proved what I have to the world, if you don’t want my advice that’s cool.

    Take a look and your “portfolio” keep in mind over a 20 year career I’d say my breakdown is

    1000+ in type 1
    100 in type 2, 
    10 in type 3, 
    Maybe 2 in type 4.

    You likely need all of them, but be intentional about your mix based on your needs.

    Too many #3’s and #4’s and you can feel hyper unsuccessful and that you are always messing things up (luckily #4’s will put in the work over years and years to help you), too many 1’s and 2’s and you feel better for a while, but after the chats your pipeline is still crap, your margins are still crap, your turnover is too high, and/or your bank account is too low. So you’ll be in the death cycle of talking to people who can’t help you even though they REALLY wish they could.

  • Delete my Instagram account or delete each of 3600+ Instagram photos one at a time, over 8+ hours?

    TLDR — There’s power in knowing when you are bullshitting yourself. The only way to get better at that is to occasionally take a step back and look at what put out in the world. When is the last time you asked yourself:

    “Why did I post that happy anniversary shout out to my wife Facebook when I could have just told her?” or “why do I take more pics when I am at expensive restaurants but none at the local diner?”

    This is the book (Mistakes were made but not by me) that started this entire journey of deep critical self reflection. It was the first book I read that didn’t affirm that I was doing things right / thinking right, instead it made me say…wait if all these people can BS themselves and it’s clear as day to me in this book, where am I BS’ing myself? It’s funny how the story of doctors fighting hand washing in the 1850’s kicked this whole thing off.

    If you want to improve the mental health of your friends, consider posting how awesome your life is a whole lot less on social media. We’re all part of the comparison culture problem, and we can do something about it.

    I decided to try to dig deep and look at my own behaviors on how often I pick up my phone, checking, getting dialed in to the urge to check even when I knew I wanted to check less.

    I could have zapped the entire account in 3 or 4 clicks but instead I deleted each photo which takes 3 taps per photo. I wanted to evaluate each of my own photos and words, critically, with a cynical eye. Looking at each photo I put out there from a “what were you trying to communicate?” lens.

    I was looking for “look how great my life is" style posts, humblebrags, anything that could incite comparison, jealousy, etc – things that are not consistent with who I want to be, did I post a lot of pics of my cars when I bought them, or other flashy things, Rolexes, my 2 pack abs, expensive shoes, that pic that made me look better than I actually do, first class seats, Michelin star rated chefs, I evaluated every photo wondering … why…with a super critical eye.

    Was I ever using brands as a proxy for how “successful” I am, Or was I just trying to share my life with my friends?

    I wanna share life with my friends, who want to see me happy, right? For me that was BS!

    Maybe 2% of my followers on instagram are people I actually have called or emailed in the last year. I’m also not an artist where I wanted to share my work with the world.

    98% of my followers were not friends, but with each accepted friend request, I can get more likes on my photos — and was more likes (even if anonymous) just another way to feel better about myself? (For the record, I LOVE photography and have been into it for over 20 years, but still if I am being honest with myself).

    So why do I care about amassing likes from people I don’t know? Could it be to incite jealousy? Hmmmm.

    But I cared about how many likes something got. I wouldn’t say that, but I recognized how much more frequently I would login after I posted a photo. If I didn’t post a photo for 3 months, few logins. If I posted a photo 3 hours ago, refresh, refresh, refresh.

    The most cringeworthy post of 7+ years

    Luckily after going through 3600 photos, one by freaking one, over 8.5 hours I found only 1 that felt like, really dude, that was some whack shit to say. The photo was fine, the caption was cringeworthy.

    A hotel I was staying at had a heliport and I snapped a picture of the hotel grounds on the Bosporus in Istanbul (the shots were beautiful)

    But my caption said “This place has a heliport to bring you from the airport and the executive suite was 15k a night (I stayed in the most basic one)!!”

    Why the heck would I take a beautiful pic like this and caption it with that? The cost and heliport had nothing to do with the picture. So why add that as the caption?

    For the record this our moderately priced room where we stayed

    Luckily that was 7 years ago and it was the only 1 that I felt really shitty about posting.

    Most of my photos were beer, cityscapes, kids, and things I saw beauty in! No selfies in front of everything thank GOD.

    Why were airports my #2 most posted type?

    Airports are NOT beautiful. Especially the Philadelphia International Airport. So why did I take hundreds of photos from there?

    I took a lot of photos at airports and outside plane windows. I took a cynical view and wondered if I was trying to say “check me out, on the go, I’m successful” and I sat with that.

    Given I used to be afraid to fly, I can’t help but think a part of me with each photo was saying “hey kid, you are getting over your big fear”. I took so many photos from the Philadelphia Airport, so when I did that deep self evaluation I was thinking…it’s not impressive to be in your hometown airport hundreds of times, yet I had hundreds of pics. Maybe I am self justifying, maybe I’m not but I tried to consider all angles.

    Like most folks I took a lot of pics traveling, it just happens that I travel a LOT for work and I love taking pics of architecture / beautiful things, so I’mma give myself a pass on that. But travel seems like something everyone in my social circle does so me going to Ireland isn’t a humblebrag — esp when my photos are of the airport, or is that BS? 🙂

    Well I won’t be updating my Instagram account or logging in so what’s done is done, but at least I used the process to dig in on myself a little bit.

  • Bridge Run

    Bridge Run

  • In a pandemic your support systems determine your level of “struggle”

    Every week at Seer we ask people 1 question:
    What are you most proud of accomplishing last week.

    We implemented this for 3 reasons:

    • As a company gets bigger it gets harder for us to stay on top of the great things people do.
    • It gives everyone’s work equal opportunity to have their work seen.
    • Culturally it serves as a reminder that we WANT you share your successes. IMHO: Too many people don’t share wins b/c they don’t want to look like they are bragging.

    I’m a pretty positive guy, and throughout this pandemic and the roller coaster of emotions have been there but I’ve always been pretty positive throughout — never fully realizing that it was the support system around me that helped me deal with the pandemic with a good attitude, energy, etc. Wife, grandparents, nanny, work is 3 blocks away, amazing leadership team, calendar flexibility, etc. I always realize it to some extent because I focus on gratitude, but I found out just how much that support system has been getting me through when my kid got a positive test.

    Last week I filled this out for what I accomplished to the team, I recognized man do I have a lot of privileges…

    Team,

    It’s what I didn’t accomplish. 🙂

    Last week I was proud of the team we have assembled to help me run this business.
    Had a COVID case hit my family and I was able to accomplish NOTHING, because so many people stepped up for me.

    Last week I am thankful for my ability to gain perspective and look for the value in all situations.

    My 6 YO got COVID, so I got to feel that worry that so many people have had throughout this pandemic.

    Masked up indoors, windows open, 100 degrees, it was a fun week.

    Then because my wife and younger son were negative they left the house, leaving me to be solo with my COVID positive son, Rio. I recognized a lot of privilege I have. My nanny had to stay away too, so I was solo, no wife, no support system, no grandparents.

    It caused me to reflect a lot of single parents (and heck even 2 parent households where both parents have busy jobs) are like this, and while I was only 6 days or so, I felt the drain. It was helpful to feel that and I hope make me a more empathetic leader.

    Perspective #1: Working with kids, from home during a pandemic
    I tried my best to be available for work, but I failed time and time again to be as available as I thought. I didn’t want my kid watching TV all day so found myself playing a little bit during the day — many nights working from 8pm-12am (or beyond) just to try to get people the answers they needed so they could do their jobs. This is tough and what a LOT of our teammates have gone through. When I played with my son , I found myself feeling guilty that I wasn’t getting people answers they could use, felt like I was always behind.

    #2: This house is a MESS, but I can’t find time to clean it
    From the time I founded Seer I knew working from home didn’t fit my work style. But being forced to for a week+ helped me feel what it felt like to not only not have time during the day to manage my kid and work, but also I had to SEE the mess my house was becoming. At work I can separate my spaces and I have always been appreciative of that, but having to see my house a mess several times a day, but not getting to cleaning it until the wee hours helped me gain more understanding of how seeing the mess of your house hour after hour and know you can’t get to it is DRAINING. You feel a bit like a failure like “how can I not get to these basic housekeeping tasks?”.

    I did try to make my bed every morning, and largely did that as my “I am going to at least start this day off right” approach.

    #3 Having an awesome nanny + private school is a major stress relief
    Anyone who ever asked me how I’m doing — you always get real answers with me, and I’ve largely recognized that I’ve “been really good” almost every day b/c I have an amazing support system.

    My kid was able to be in school almost the whole time during the pandemic and our nanny managed the school drop offs and even when school shut down for 2 weeks, she managed most of the zoom class work and balance that enabled me to be super present for you all, my teammates which helped us as a company get through. Last week if you aske me how I was doing, you would have heard me happy that my kid didn’t have symptoms, but I was BEAT the eff up after only 1 week.

    #4 — Air conditioning is awesome
    So I kept all our windows open to maximize ventilation and some days it felt like 104 degrees. Reminded me that a lot of people going through the same thing I am throughout my city don’t have AC, yet they gotta work, manage kids with covid, and all the other stuff too. Having those windows open all week, zapped my energy — I would sit around the house just sweating — by the time I got to put my kid down to start work, I was ZAPPED my shirt was sweat soaked and I realized all that sweating took even more energy outta me.

    I’m grateful for the people we work with and for the experience as I think it will make me a better leader and a more empathetic human. So I took some good even out of my kid getting Covid, thankfully he is safe and sound now and my kids are back together, playing and by playing I mean…being annoying and fighting — I’ll take it. 🙂

    We made it through

  • I’ve been turning “tough jobs” into fun since I was 12

    “Business is my hobby” by Gary Vaynerchuk resonated with me 4 years ago when I first saw it.

    I hustle. I’m unapologetic about it.

    When I tell people how much joy I find in my work and so often the response is “well yeah now that you have a big successful company and people to help you run it, and you are financially independent, I bet it’s enjoyable.”

    That is fair. So I dug deep and looked within and questioned myself — Am I only saying I love work and I love my job because I’m now at this point?

    Here’s the secret — For every job I’ve had, paperboy to telemarketing to warehouse worker (3 years) to CEO, I tried to find joy in it or a game somewhere in there to turn the work into a way to compete, with someone or with myself.

    I picked a few jobs I’ve had (I skipped 3 just to keep this article short) and how I turned them into games / challenges.

    Turning work into fun since the 6th grade, and what is up with the tevin campbell look in my senior year?

    Age 12:

    I had a paper route. This gave my mom an opportunity to teach me about money, customer service, etc. I wanted to get maximum tips and spend the least time doing it. So I learned how to “optimize” my route to get thing done fast but with integrity so I could get those big tips at Christmas. Also when it rained my mom never drove me around (for Sunday papers, the big heavy ones w/ all the inserts and coupons, she worked full time)…this is YOUR money she would say. Why should I have to work on my day off (sunday) so you can make money to spend on baseball cards? Noted mom & I hope to be this way with my kids, but it’s going to be hard.

    (I will never forget the day she drove me b/c it snowed a foot on a sunday).

    I loved connecting with my customers, I liked managing my books on who paid and who was past due, I enjoyed knowing that I could both optimize my route and maximize customer satisfaction at the same time, some how it gave me joy, I was 12 years old.

    At age 13:

    I was packing bloodborne pathogen kits in a warehouse in New Jersey, I found a way to turn it into a game, how many could I do in a day? Age 13, I wanted to be a high performer, better than the rest, and I think I did pretty well. I outlasted almost everyone else in that hot ass warehouse. This is the first time I realized that I got joy from lasting longer than others did, my best friend quit half way through. I finished.

    This year I learned how to set up a “database” on my Packard Bell 386 to track my baseball cards, so I could manage their values and I played “games” where I sold them to people to maximize return.

    At age 15:

    I worked at an independent sneaker shop, I sold shoes to people, helped them try them on, I smelled feet ALL. DAMN. DAY.

    I was working with adults for whom this was their livelihood, for me it was my high school spending money, how I bought hockey pads, cleats, and gas. But if you saw us working, you would have thought the opposite.

    I loved working the closing shifts because every day for the owners to print out the daily sales by associate to see the “data” on how I did. Man those dot matrix printers were slow, I couldn’t wait to see that ink hit the sheet one line at a time watch my name come off and see how I did.

    Most days I put a whooping on everyone. I wasn’t motivated by the money, was motivated to be a high performer, top “compete at the highest level” as Cory Henke would say, and I was only 15. I treated work like sports. You ain’t beating me, and when you do I’mma watch you, learn from you and add what you are doing to my style.

    At age 19:

    I worked in an amazon warehouse. Same thing, I found joy in speed, optimization, and quality. I was surrounded by people who complained… “this place sucks”, “it’s too hot”, “the food in the vending machines is stale”. I instead started challenging myself to speed up my times, optimize my route, and keep quality high. The same challenge I had 7 years earlier as a paper boy. I spent 2 years optimizing routes, figuring out ways to do things better.

    When I say “I love my job” it’s because it fits what I like to do. It’s not about the “commercial success” Seer has had or financial independence … I loved the hustle, paperboy, to warehouse job, to telemarketing, to warehouse job, to Seer. Same shit.

    Age 44 — The right work + the right people = motivation

    No Crystal = No Joy for Wil 🙂 Thank you Crystal — 13 years.

    Here are just 2 people who have been with me when we were single digit number of employees, I would be lying if I didn’t recognize that working with talented people is also tremendously important in me loving my job today, I get so much joy watching people @ Seer “win”. That I find that’s the difference in most of those jobs above it was on me to “win” — with Seer its different, the joy comes from helping others to win and I’m finding that is quite joyous 🙂

    I was there to hear about his early dates, now he’s on kid #4–12 years together Adam, appreciate ya.

    Today my motivation comes from both the work and the people I want to help win.

    My motivation isn’t to get acquired or have an exit, it is to have a meaningful impact on the trajectory of my teammates lives and careers and in doing that I think we get to impact our industry and most importantly the lives of people in our community in a meaningful way, that just might continue to be “fun” for me.

    I have the ability to trick my mind into “enjoying” any job / turn it into a game, which can help me perform at that high level, even if I am “only” packing books in a warehouse.

    As Gary says in the video…some people get joy from watching game of thrones and that is awesome, no one judges for you for that. Just be open to the fact that for some people their “game of thrones” is business or a data problem (mine).

  • Find your praise “blind spots”

    How do you know if you have praise bias / blind spots??

    Many years ago, I read the book 1001 ways to reward employees and one example that stood out to me was this one.

    This is part of how you can make recognizing your team’s work a habit. You all know my love of data though, so I love having “structured” praise which lets me see my habits over time. Submitting praise in our feedback tool (Small Improvements) allowed me to see how I was doing at the virtual “5 coins” example. Praise in email, chats, zooms, don’t have a schema and makes it quite hard to find your blind spots, so you likely just perpetuate them.

    Data. data. data.

    Structured data has helped me be the husband / father I’ve wanted to be, so what about manager?

    When I did the analysis 3–4 years ago, I realized 2 areas where I was weak in praise. My west coast team, and my non SEO team. Why? Proximity. I wasn’t “walking by” my west coast team as often as my Philly team. My background is in SEO, so I got pulled into more and more SEO deliverables and SEO conversations. If I didn’t have the data / reminder I would have been lost.

    I exported the data from small improvements, pulled in who I was giving shout outs to, then joined that in Power Bi to our HR tool Bamboo, boom I could see my deficiencies / biases in praise.

    Small change.

    While I didn’t have 5 coins, I did have the data and a desire to change. So every Friday I should have at least 2 people who are from our west coast office or not in SEO to shout out. It was an opportunity to pause, think, and any week when I didn’t have someone to shout out, I set up a coffee chats the following week with a few non SEO team members or West coast team,

    Dear manager your team will fill in gaps.

    This past week one of my top performers asked, “Wil, are we cool?, You haven’t responded to two of my messages”. When I looked back both messages were this person giving me an answer to an important project, and I didn't respond saying “Thank you this is what I needed” because it was what I needed I just saw the answer and kept moving, but to that person it was a potential signal to say … is something up? Thank God they reached out, most won’t.

    One downside to public praise, people might get used to it and think…oh my manager hasn’t given me praise in 3 months, I am probably not doing as good as I used to. So just keep in mind that people often think this way and try to fill in the gaps.

  • 5 years ago I got weird response to an offer & learned a sad truth about interviewing while…

    I had been trying to recruit Lisa for 5 years and the timing never worked out.

    She’d bring her team to the “search church” for our community events to network and learn year in and year out.

    Ahhh the search church events, Lisa and her team are somewhere in this photo.

    When she couldn’t get budget to educate her people, she found our events and would bring them there! I liked that kind of leadership. But in all my attempts I wasn’t able to have her join us.

    One day I got a call … that she might be interested in interviewing at Seer. I was stoked. I had an open role, she would be great for it! But she said she wanted to see if I could hire her for a job to start in about 7 months.

    7 months? Why would you be asking me for a job now, that I have an opening for now, that you couldn’t start for 7 months?

    And that’s when I learned one of the biggest areas of naivete that I’ve ever had in my career.

    She said two words. “I’m. Pregnant.”

    I was confused, what does you being 4 months pregnant have to do with you not taking a job with us now?

    Photo by Tai’s Captures on Unsplash

    She was confused. She said “I’m showing” — She assumed that no one would hire someone who needed to go out on leave for 3 months after only being in the company for 3 months. She wanted to take paid leave and assumed a company she just got hired at wouldn’t also give her paid leave because FMLA requires you to have been at a company for 12 months before you qualify. But we don’t follow rules here at Seer, so it was a no brainer.

    I was confused, what does you being pregnant and showing prevent you from doing the job as we’ve outlined it in the job description?

    And that is when it hit me. I was due for an education.

    Her assumption was that many companies will interview you but they don’t hire you when you are obviously pregnant, she assumed that would be the case here and that was why she wanted to start working here after her pregnancy.

    I was still confused. If you are the best applicant now, that I can get now, and I have a need now, then what’s the big deal about you coming to work with us for 3 months taking 3 months off and then coming back and working with us after that?

    She was now super confused. Was I saying that I wanted to hire her anyway knowing that she would be gone for 3 months after only being here for 3?

    100 effing percent!

    What I learned

    Two things that were insanely eye-opening for me in this exchange

    1 — It never occurred to me that anyone would ever not hire a woman who was able to help them right now for the next three or four or five months and then take some time off and come back. We’re in the talent business, I can deal with someone being out for 3 months. I know there are some “risks” here but sometimes you gotta decide the company you want to be and what you want to put out in the world.

    2 —Lisa was working at a Fortune 100 company, she had been there for four to five years and yet only being in our company for 3 months our maternity benefits (specifically the pay and some of the other support) was significantly better than her Fortune 100 companies benefits policy. She worked on an international team so it was especially difficult to see her colleagues in other countries getting very different amounts of support from the company.

    That second point also shocked me, how could it be that someone who’s been a high performer in your organization for four or five years gets pregnant wants to start a family and gets worse benefits than a company for whom she’s never proven a thing?

    How’d it work out?

    Great. Lisa now leads our fastest growing division, she has helped take it from a volunteer project to 3 million division in the matter of two and a half years.

    So for me, betting on talented people is always a GREAT bet, and if companies keep overlooking talented women because they are getting ready to start a family then they just might be losing out on someone about to do amazing things in their company.

    I hope more remote hiring makes it harder to “see someone is pregnant” but I wish it wasn’t an issue either way.

    One important thing here is she took a pay cut to come to our company, she believed in her ability to show value, she believed in what we were trying to do. She valued some things, at this time, more than maximizing the numbers in that check. The role energized her, the way the company operated energized her, and oftentimes those things come at a cost.

    In her words “I needed a job that energizes me or I would never have been able to justify being away from my baby and putting them in day care for something I hated.”

    Now she’s in our she took a bet on us, and I guess I took a bet on her, either way its working out!

    This, my friends, is why understanding different perspectives is so important. It never registered to me that a company wouldn’t hire a woman because she might be going out in 3 months or so for a job now.

    For those of us running companies, this story is also a reminder that people show up like “Yeah Right, your company is different, sure.” So don’t always expect people to just “trust you” — people are dealing with baggage that sometimes has nothing to do with you — but it effects their expectations on the way in.

  • “Thank you for firing me”, 9 years later.

    Managers, firing sucks. It does, we do it hoping it is the best end state for the company and the individual. A good manager wants to see someone win, but a good manager also knows when someone isn’t going to win at this time, in this company, that it is time to part ways.

    8 years ago I wrote a post about loving the employees who leave, it all still holds true.

    I had to share this email I got from someone I had to let go, 9 years ago.

    I’m sharing this for every manager who will never get a message like this…most of us don’t. I’ve only gotten 1, in an 18 year career but I bet somewhere there are more of these that just haven’t been written. So keep your head up.

    If you’ve ever been let go and in reflection it helped you to be on the path you are on now, consider dropping your own email to that person, it might help make them a better manager.

    It took him 9 years to write this…

    Subj: Thank you wil

    Hey Wil,

    This is an email I’ve written many many times. I’m not sure if you remember me but I worked at SEER, very briefly, around 2012? I think. I don’t even know anymore.

    I just wanted to thank you for giving me that opportunity and teaching me the most valuable skills in my professional life.

    You ended up firing me, in a frightening upset tone that left me absolutely crushed afterward. It took me almost ten years now to realize that was the best thing you could have ever done for me. SEO was not my passion. Development was. And you encouraged me to build cool shit and explore the unknown when I showed you Fusion Tables (RIP).

    I am so very grateful for your time and to have met you. I’ve now worked my way up as a full stack developer working on [redacted]. And because of you , I ALWAYS keep detailed meeting notes and send them afterward. Every part of me hates it but I couldn’t ever stop.

    So, in all sincerity, thank you Wil.

    (Sorry I know you hate long emails)

    This email is touching for so many reasons. I’m busy so I’m going to rip these quick and hit publish.

    • It took him 9 years and many re-writes to send this, this was a great reminder that letting people go from your company can have LONG term effects on how people feel about themselves. Reaching back out can be scary / difficult.
    • Getting to work in your company for some people is validation that they are good / good enough. The opposite is true for some people you have to let go, it’s even more devastating when it doesn’t work. I got this from someone we let got 2–3 years ago, it was a new perspective to me.
    • Firings sometimes are just what people needed to do that soul searching and deep questioning, but we rarely hear that feedback, which for this person helped them to see that he is a super high performer when in a different role altogether (he’s working on satellite technology).
    • Firings sometimes “nudge people” in a direction that they know is right but were unwilling to do. The better you get at those nudges, the sooner someone can go find where they can be successful, you owe it to them.