Yesterday I has a team show and tell on some new power bi data I was visualizing and I saw someone had a TON of hiking gear in their background and when I said “woah you are a hiker” their response was “yeah I probably need a better background.” To which I was like NO WAY!!! Bring your whole self, I HATE those fake backgrounds…cause I don’t get to learn anything about you, I don’t get even a glimpse into your life, which when hiring 40–50 people during a pandemic — I’m trying to get any clues I can to help make connections and know the people I work with. I asked about the climbing because I wanted to introduce him to 2 people who are big climbers at Seer and one of our alumni. But to him it was like “oh snap the CEO might be judging me b/c of my background.” That is important to recognize managers, I thought I was being good and a connector and it could be perceived as the opposite.
Obviously some people don’t want you to see their stuff / where they live and you gotta respect that, so blur away, but anything that makes me more human to my team (the clues around me) I would love to show.
Basecamp Debate: Bring your whole self or leave that junk at home?
With all that basecamp jazz going on (looks like they are doubling down) — I actually want to get to know my team better and for them to bring a bit more of themselves. Some people are into sports and beer that’s OK to chat about, but a black man losing his life and how we can be a part of the solution is not? Nah I’m not feeling that. How we support all kinds of perspectives
Recent Interview — tight quarters, ZERO apologies = LOVE that!
I love it when I am interviewing someone and they have someone (cat, kid, sig other) walking around in the background and DO NOT apologize for it or even flinch at it happening.
We’re all doing the best we can with the tools we got in this pandemic.
Set expectations is fine “hey things are a bit crazy here today”, ok that is cool.
But “I’m sorry” is NOT fine.
Confidence in your value to an organization sounds like this: “If a manager doesn’t understand that we’re all doing the best we can with what we got and I feel the need to apologize, then why would I want to work w/ them anyway?”
Lack of confidence is “I hope this doesn’t make me look bad”.
I need that confidence in board rooms, meetings, etc to help my clients win and succeed.
I know its a habit for many of us, just keep working at getting better at it, you never know how it is interpreted.
A Caveat
With that said, I’ve interviewed people who wear backwards baseball hats and people who wear suits, typically I don’t apply the confidence rule for those kinds of things…why? B/c I don’t want people making assumptions about my clients, and if this is your best foot forward, well making assumptions is how I always get in trouble. So if you come in with your hat backwards, you just gotta be THAT much more impressive than the average. 🙂
What sparked this post is the pure amount of calls I am getting for people interested in acquiring Seer. While I want to understand the value of my asset in the marketplace, I’m not in a rush to sell. I’ve been through this process once before.
It was the kick in the ass I needed to realize how big Seer has gotten and how it’s time to start implementing my new playbook.
The New Playbook
Who wrote the business playbook anyway?
The one that says winner takes all.
The one that encourages entrepreneurs to set up and sell, then do it all over again?
The one that rewards execs with out of touch salaries, saying they “deserve it”
Let’s rip this shit up.
This isn’t an epiphany for me. I’ve been writing my own playbook based on my values, since day 1.
What I Needed My Playbook to Enable
Taking care of my Day 1’s
I get chills thinking about the impact on my Day 1’s.
If I’m BIGGIE, I’m always trying to put on “Junior Mafia” — my love of rap has a consistent theme…when one guy makes it out, he brings up those who were with him, his “Day 1’s.”
I got a lot of Day 1's.
The idea is that your Day 1’s push to get you straight. Everyone focuses on making “Big Poppa” successful on the assumption that he won’t forget his Day 1’s. The ones who had a lot of other options along the way but they kept on believing.
I guess you could say Sky’s The Limit for my Day 1’s, because I’m capping my upside, then the minute I hit my enough number, I’m eliminating my upside (read on about that later).
Defining Day 1’s
Show don’t tell. As I built my list of Day 1’s, I noticed a trend. None asked to be Day 1’s. Most didn’t ever press for bigger bonuses, raises, etc which made me want to give more than they would have ever asked for. More of the ups and downs of this program in Part III.
Phantom equity (video explaining it) holders are my Day 1’s (which I hope to add more and more folks to over time).
Day 1’s are about tenacity, not tenure. Day 1’s IMPACT profits. They go above and beyond “doing the job.” Day 1’s IMPACT CULTURE.
Tenacity vs Tenure One member of our office cleaning crew has done a lot of small things to have my back. When my dog stopped coming into the office because she couldn’t walk anymore, Ana brought me doggie aspirin and other medicines to ease her pain (and mine, watching my dog break down was painful). When my dog passed she removed the bed, so I wouldn’t have to (it’s painful getting rid of your doggies last memories).
This is having my back and creating culture in a real way that someone who cleans our offices just might end up in our phantom equity someday, even though she’s been employed full time for less than 1 year.
The role of tenure is just consistency, were you able to do those things year in and year out over multiple years?
Impact Profit Saying “I take care of my clients” is a lot like the Chris Rock Skit when people say “I take care of my kids,” and he’s like “You’re supposed to, you low expectation having MF’er.”
You get paid and bonused to do your job. Phantom creates a second track for those who choose to take a path where they do the extras outside of the job description even when time is tight, someday when / if this business is sold they get a piece of that long term upside. People can choose which path they take.
My Hope for My Day 1’s
Now I hope to live long enough to see my Day 1’s kids go to college, get married, have their own kids. Maybe sit at a graduation or two. Maybe sit at a wedding or two. Sit in the back and know that their parents paid for that shit in cash in part because I hit my enough point, which expedited them to get closer to their enough point.
I know someday I’ll go to a house warming of someone that dropped 60% of the down payment in cash. Someone who will never ever again have to take a job for money to pay the mortgage, unless they start going crazy and going past their enough point.
That is what I want to happen.
Could I have used that money for a down payment on a second home or something else, which is flashy, gets likes and makes people think I’m successful, Yeah. But that isn’t fucking success, success is pulling up your team with an aggressive profit share for all, and a super aggressive share. None of that shit would add up to the joy I’d get from that wedding, house warming, or graduation.
I get fucking chills just thinking about this. It makes me wanna GRIND, not for me, but for them — my Day 1’s. I want to be a part of making as many of those stories that I can, for as many impact players at Seer as possible. That will keep me working my 50–55 hours weeks, no days off for me.
I’ll dilute myself to zero (well almost zero) to get the chance to take care of the people who took care of me at this level.
Not having to think twice about doing the right thing
Why is it so hard to do the right thing in business? Profit over people is often the culprit.
Could you imagine how you would run a company if you owned 100% of it and didn’t want the profits or upside if it sold?
For one — you’d not put up with bullshit.
Your whole mental state is like, I’m giving out all the upside of this business, so I’m not here for money. Meaning I’m playing with the house’s money at this point, let’s go try to do some GREAT things for our people and our business 🙂.
But even better, you get to invest in things that can help your team, not just money…instantly.
Like what if I hired a bunch of full time people to cover PTO asks so people could take more advantage of our PTO without having to always find help? I could.
I think of the innovations in our culture but also the investments I can make in R&D and innovation for our clients — Sky’s The Limit.
Implementing the Playbook
The first calls you make are to a wealth management team
When I told my wealth team that I wanted to cap my net worth, they were like…here we go.
I’m a difficult client:
I am afraid of having too much
I get most of my joy from enabling others to feel less financial stress
I don’t want to leave money to my kids
Meaning the typical playbook wasn’t going to work:
Preserve my wealth
Maximize my wealth
Build my wealth for future generations
None of that applied to me and the typical playbook had to be thrown out on day 1. We were going to play by our own rules up in here.
Instead of “take care of Wil and the family”, the approach to managing my wealth is take care of Wil and get him to “enough” fast. Once we do that, help him take care of 50–100 of his Day 1’s.
It’s crazy to LOVE your job so much, that you are willing to come and work every day, when there is no upside for you personally. That is how good my Day 1’s are and how much I want to help put them on their own paths to enough.
I have now diluted myself significantly
As you may know, phantom equity is only for a change in control. But as my wealth management team and I read from our new playbook — I will now use it as a mechanism to deploy more profits back to the team and community, ONLY. None for me.
So, what are we going to do with our profits?
1 — Protect the house I always want to have 2.5 months of payroll in the bank. Enough profits tucked away enough to make sure we are safe.
That is where the first [10–30%] of Seer’s profits will go, back to the company — this first year we’re at about 15%. We will evaluate annually based on needs for R&D, Innovation, Risk, etc.
2 — Treat phantom equity holders like equity holders After we take care of the business, my Day 1’s will take their percent ownership and get a distribution every 6 months of the profits after the company is taken care of.
2a — Aggressive dilution Now that I am at my enough point, I have diluted myself down significantly. The cool part is I have another 15-20% seeking a home, people who build us up to share with. 20% of a company worth ~50 Million is legit $$ to want to give back to the team.
3 — Non-phantom equity holders (The day 2’s, so to speak) After the phantom people are paid out, we’ll still have CHUNKY bonuses left for the non-phantom equity holders.
4 — I eat last Only after everyone else is paid out, do I get whatever “scraps” are left.
If you are thinking, I thought you said you have enough Wil. You would be right….
5 — Everything over my enough, must go to help others
Once my enough number is hit (which it is super close), everything that comes to me will be restricted in a vehicle (Likely a combination of Trusts and other financial vehicles) that must go into improving the world somehow via charitable donations.
If I still have too much, then I’m pouring it back into R&D, making our company better, growing it’s value, of which I will see none of, weird huh?
This is how I’ll never be taking the advantage of the upside of Seer again…since I’m close enough to that number I’m executing on this approach now.
My Next Step
I’ll keep sharing my story along the way, so check back if you want to see how this new playbook plays out. Part III is already in the works, and its the downsides of doing something like this, I fully expect blowback, stay tuned.
What am I going to do when I love my job, own the business 100%, yet I don’t want to take advantage of any of the upside of owning this business anymore?
I’ve hit my point of enough
My house is enough, my cars are enough, my kids private school is enough, my vacation fund is enough. I’ve seen enough of the world. My rainy day fund is enough, my take my parents on vacation fund is enough, my buy a small house for my in laws to move near their grandkids fund is enough. There is no more “Life changing money” for me. I’ve lived a life well within my means, so what do I do when I’m content?
I look out at the world and don’t see a need for more…for me.
I want a different kind of “more”
My company could do more, I want to grow more, we could do more for our team, more for our clients, more for our industry and more for our community. So I’m hungry for MORE but not for me and its time to eat.
Reflection. What too much money sounds like
Let’s start a year ago…We’re in a pandemic, and I’m looking for options to get the kids somewhere warmer. I looked at the cost of buying out all of first class for a flight to San Diego. Get my family and nanny somewhere warm for the winter where my kids can be outside still. Cost would have been about $12K.
Now I didn’t think about that for long but the fact that I even priced it out as a possibility (with the fact that I have access to a 3br apartment — for the company — in downtown San Diego) says something.
Did I drop $12K on those flights? Heck no…I chose not to for a variety of reasons but the fact that it was an option when I’m also writing posts about the virtues of being raised by blue collar parents, says something. The time has come.
That was a gross way to spend money & I want no parts of that life
So what’s a guy to do?, I don’t indulge, I don’t splurge, but I have this “asset” my company, Seer Interactive. It takes me months to choose to buy a new unlocked phone for $1,000 bux. I’m always going to be uncomfortable with my privilege.
So how do I rectify my values and my privilege?
Financial Humility
The house I bought when Seer hit $1 Million in sales (13 years ago) is the same house I live in now as Seer expects to be at $35 Million by end of year.
35X increase in revenue, same house. (although I am finally in the process of building a new house)
I also bought a car that year, a nice BMW 2 seater (the only time I ever bought a new car in my life).
35X increase in revenue, same car. Paid off the car and the house years ago, resulting in banking things which set me up for this moment. A moment to write a new playbook for how we build businesses.
Defining “Enough”
Take a second to consider and write down your enough number
No really, write it down.
What is the number at which you would say,” “I have enough money.” Put it away somewhere. Even better, tattoo it on your body.
I learned this lesson from our nanny. She tattooed the word “enough” on her forearm at the age of 24. It’s her only tattoo. I’ll be getting one too. Thus began my fascination with the concept of enough. My 24 year old nanny had a reminder on her arm, that whatever she had that day was enough.
The 4 books that highlighted the “too much” problem.
Bad Blood by John Carreyrou I was driving cross country and I got caught in a storm, a bad winter storm, at times I feared for my life a little bit. It took me 14 hours to drive in one day, yet I didn’t want the day to end…I was listening to Bad Blood on audiobook.
I was captivated by the inability to say “enough” by Elizabeth Holmes.
Billion Dollar Loser by Reeves Wiedeman Recently on my morning runs, I found myself adding 2 miles everyday to keep listening to Billion Dollar Loser about Adam Neumann of WeWork fame.
I was addicted to stories about a spa and an ice bath in his private work bathroom.
I realized that I was addicted to hearing them because they were reminders of what happens when you haven’t done the work to build a point of point of enough money, enough power, enough recognition from peers, etc. You just keep going and one day your new normal is 2 houses in the Hamptons and 2 private jets.
American Kingpin by Nick Bilton This book was a reminder that the more power you get, the more money you get, the more you can twist good beliefs into bad behaviors. I’ll talk more on this later, but look at philanthropy — how many people justify all their excessive $$ for philanthropy, but then write off board visits on a private jet???
This book shows how you can become an out-of-touch ass over time, through self justification. It showed me how a person can start off with strongly held beliefs / virtues that, for the most part, are GOOD. But how over time you can take those good beliefs to a BAD extreme, a real bad extreme, self justifying all your shitty behaviors the whole way.
I’ve never looked so hard at myself after reading a book. I had to ask where I am I bullshitting myself into telling myself something is OK, that 5- years- ago- me would have said “that guy is an ass?”
But Wil, you could do _____ if you had more money
Today I’m afraid of how easy it is to self justify getting more and doing more. No one ever said you could do more for your team, it was always something that came back to me, but they are the people who have had my back for years? Build a playground w/ my name on it, nope. Invest in someone else’s business, nope. Invest in the people who got me to my enough point…YAS QUEEN.
So I decided: Yup, I am almost at my enough point. It’s aligned with something I wrote 2 years ago:
Phase 4 — Aggressively Start to Share the Wealth. In this phase, I’m basically saying: look, I want to grow this business, but I am going to take less and less of the profit. I want to continue to grow our company’s nest egg so we can lose our largest client and be OK. I want to keep some for innovation, but after that let’s create mechanisms to deploy it.
I’m now at Phase 4, going into Phase 5 — which I never expected.
Phase 5 — Work to build the value of something you don’t have upside value in.
Think about that. Working 8–10 hours a day, everyday and some weekends for what if not money?
Love of the game. I love what I do, the people I get to do it for (my clients), the challenges I get, and the people I get to win with. My team.
I live in FEAR of what happens if you don’t ever say…OK I now have enough!
This is what happens when, you don’t ever say I have enough.
I recently looked at a CEO who got a $50 Million Dollar Bonus, while laying people off. Somehow he has to go home feeling ok with himself, or he wouldn’t take the bonus. How could he?
Self justification — we self justify our obsessive, over-indulgent behaviors to avoid the reality of our excess. the we surround ourselves with other self indulgent a-holes, so we don’t stand out as greedy.
I look at these people and think I want to be NOTHING like them. So I look at what they all have in common… they never knew when they had enough, and they self justified the FUCK outta their decisions while they just keep getting more. I bet you if you asked that CEO if he deserved $50 Million in 1 year, he’d find a way to say “absolutely.” I bet you would roll your eyes.
Something you don’t see out your window when you work from home (for most people). Someone nodding off from taking heroin. Sitting here in my office I just saw that. This is part of why I like being in offices, in a city, its a reminder in the middle of “catching up on pocket reads” of what is out there in the world and a moment to reflect on what am I doing to help?
I’ve done a lot of running at 5:30–6:00 am and man what I see out there only 1 mile from my house / office, it’s humbling.
I’ve watched construction guys working outside all winter long, I’ve seen a guy in a wheelchair who had no arms and legs while his girl (I think) was at the ATM outside my office, he seemed happy in that moment.
View from my desk, I see good out this view, and bad.
That Same ATM later get destroyed in a protest when a bunch of dudes tried to bomb it and steal money:
Yup, went out with my broom and cleaned it
I’ll always work and live in cities it is an in my face reminder to be grateful, I don’t have Jones’es to compare my house model to, I got this and it shapes my worldview on what life in a pandemic is like. Cause I see a lot more than if I only saw my basement walls or backyard most of the day.
It is a reminder that a lot of people got it pretty bad out there. It’s a reminder that these people and I…we share paths, paths to work, we use the same ATMs, trash bins, etc. We’re connected.
It’s a real reminder that I have the ability to help.
I remember I once saw an old homeless man getting his ass kicked by what might have been a guy he owed money to. I ran out of my office in the middle of a 1:1 and went to help him, let him know someone out there saw that and someone out there cared enough to help him. I bought him a coffee (distanced) and he cried. I dunno what happened, I dunno who was at fault but that shouldn't happen.
Living here, working here gives me moments to be uncomfortable, and sometimes that's exactly what we need to spring into action.
Ok, first is my mom, but now that I know that she’s pretty proud of me.
Seriously though, I live in fear of becoming lazy.
I can wake up at 5:30am, go for a 5 mile run, come home — shower, change, be the first person in the office and still feel lazy, if I didn’t make my bed.
This is what it sounds like in my head:
Hey you lazy shit, you see your bed? It’s not made.
You know you want to be the guy who makes his bed every day. You know you love going to hotels where the bed is made. You know you like made beds, why are you walking out of your room without making yours, it is ONLY 3 minutes. You are starting the day taking an L.
My internal “you are being lazy” ticker runs all day. I beat myself up for spending too much time on social, why…I give zero fucks about getting better at twiter or instagram posting / reading yet I have a list of things I do want to get better at that I’m not doing every minute I spend on those platforms.
Yet when my app timer says “time’s up” and its only 5pm, I allowed myself to get sucked into things that have NOTHING to being the best me.
So I make my bed (most days), because I am afraid of 1 day turning into 3 days, turning into 3 weeks, turning into years. Then you end up looking back at yourself and realizing you never reached your potential.
This is the dialogue in my head, I see much of the world through a lens of when does laziness start and I’m afraid as hell of not knowing when it starts and having it naturally occur.
What about your friends?
You are likely, NOT surrounded by people who are going to call you out on it. So they tell you it’s OK.
There are 1000 people in this world who will tell me I’m successful. There is not 1 (Ok I might have 1) who will tell me I’m living below my potential.
Wanna find out…try this…find 10 friends to complain about your work to or your spouse to. How many are going to say… “Have you looked at yourself as the problem?” Tell someone you were overlooked for a promotion b/c you were woman, black, not the CEO’s favorite. How many are going to say…maybe, but also I see you spending a whole lot of time on Xbox? Maybe if you did less of that you could have had a better shot?
How quickly do your friends default to agreeing with you to make you feel better vs challenging you to get better / call out your behaviors that work against your stated goals?
Don’t compare yourself to anyone but yourself
I recently chatted with a friend who started an agency the same time I did, his is doing over $100 Million, mine is doing a “paltry” $28 Million. This doesn’t effect me one bit.
Laziness is about the “war with myself” not about me being better than anyone else, I could run a $100 business, but if I didn’t hand wash and hand dry my dishes, make my bed (most days), and go for runs on icy days in parking lots, I would consider myself lazy.
I don’t let other people make me feel bad about my accomplishments, I only allow myself to do that to me. Only I know when I tell myself “get up tomorrow and get your run in” and I don’t. When I break those promises to myself, I’m disappointed in myself. Regardless of what the outside world sees.
Data, Data, Data
The beauty of tracking my time on social, my apps, my runs etc. I have data to look back on to tell me when I’m investing time in things that do / do not work to my stated goals.
I can’t tell you the amount of time people tell me they are lost in their careers or at work or at home they feel disconnected. And I simply say…do you track your time on Facebook, Instagram, tik tok, etc. The answer is no. Then I’m like, start there, set timers, get the data, and 3 months later, they are in the same boat, same shit, no data. Why?
Data creates accountability and we’d rather talk about who we want to be than to take the small steps to BECOME the person who we say we want to be. It scares me to ever become someone like that because I know no one is going to put that mirror in front of me and show me I’m living below my potential. So I gotta do it for my effing self. Or risk the alternative.
In October I ran 225k, I took only 4 days off all month
So I told myself take some time heal up, so I did, next thing you know November looked like this:
This conversation in my head happens 5x-10x a day. It is a burden. However you know what my bet is, that its a bigger burden to wake up someday and realize for the last 3 years you slowly became someone who you didn’t want to become, 1 small decision at a time.
Hey Strava, if you are listening…I’d give some people the ability to see me packing behind goal, so they can ping me for a co-workout or something, that would be dope. 🙂
Have you ever believed in an idea so much that you said to your boss “look, if you give me x time frame to build this, I’ll come back with Y revenue or I’ll go back to my old job / fire me?”
I was always willing to put my ass on the line to get what I wanted out of my manager. It served me well. I assumed they had 10 other people asking for raises / promotions / etc who felt that they deserved it as much as I did.
I wanted to show up having already paid for my raise with performance on things they didn’t ask me to do.
Its been so long since I had to pitch hard for dollars, but I do remember at the 2 jobs I had before Seer, in the first (startup, I was employee #1 FT) wanted a raise and never thought to ask for one w/o a pitch, so I told my boss, hey if we are getting paid .10 cents per click, and we get on average X clicks per month, and if I am a high performer according to my reviews if I continue to get that many clicks per client, then I’ll get a regular raise b/c I’m doing my job. But what if I go home and obsess about this and find ways on nights and weekends to can rank higher for more keywords and get our clients more clicks, then for everything over the benchmark can I get .005 per click as a bonus up to X amount, and if I drop below that point you can stop the bonus. It was 23 years ago, so I can’t remember it all, I was maybe 22, but I got my bonus.
My second job, I remember wanting a raise (but it was big corporate, I was employee 25,000) so I wanted to show the company that I built something they didn’t ask me to (that is the key, if they asked me to do it, it would be part of my job, if they never asked for it, I went above and beyond) and I turned it into money, so I presented (coverage4me) — an insurance portal, where I could optimize more aggressively than I could on the corporate site and sent the traffic to our sites, in our fist year it made 300–500k in premium I believe. Then some higher ups got wind of it and shut it down.
Just reflecting on something I always did…try to pay for my own raise, unequivocally. It puts you in a different position at the table, cause of dunning kreuger effect, everyone also hitting up your boss thinks they are above average too, they have their pitch on their contributions too, but you are in a whole different position when you can point to the scoreboard.
Keep in mind, it’s a good idea to know how your company’s financials work too BTW
Probably. Mom taught me to make sure it was their loss, not mine.
I think it’s extremely difficult to prove someone didn’t hire you because of your race, gender. You just know it happens (the data proves it) but due to a slew of reasons that might not even be known to the hiring manager (biases), it’s hard to say, I wasn’t hired because I was black. One company I tried so hard to get into is run someone who isn’t racist one bit, but after 2–3 attempts, they never hired me. More on that below.
I never expected fairness
Today I was talking about company diversity with a friend and it hit me that maybe the reason why I never really harped on “fewer opportunities for POC” was that my mom drilled in my head day after day that I was never going to get a 50/50 shot, so I wonder if hearing that every day for 10 years (it felt like every day), my normal is “of course I have to be outstanding to get a fair shake” “If I am as good as my white counterpart, I’m pretty much never going to get a 50/50 shake.”
My mom taught me that complaining about racism is like wishing it would stop raining. Go get an umbrella boy and get outside. I guess my umbrella was striving for excellence, protection against the “elements”.
I realized that to get a 50/50 shake I was going to have to be better than my “opponent” and so much better that it was obvious and noticeable, not on the margins.
Know your worth down to the nickel, or be stuck in “do they like me” hell.
If you don’t know your ROI to your company, then you are stuck making your pitch for advancement / hiring on, schmoozing with the boss for late night drinks, tenure, or other things. I moved fast in my career because I chose a job where it was easy to have the receipts, every day. If I know I am directly contributing to the metrics that help my manger get their promotions, bonuses, etc, then “liking me” hopefully takes a back seat. If you promote that person you like, but they can’t contribute to your career progression like I do, that is a bad idea.
Enter digital marketing — I never was confused about my impact
Maybe that is why I loved SEO when I started in August of 1999… At the end of the day, I outranked you or I didn’t, either we were winning (page 1) or losing (page 2 of 15,000,000). I didn’t get to complain to AltaVisa, I had to be BETTER than others, white or black, and if I was better it was undeniable that I knew what I was doing. It also meant that when I got my butt kicked, I had NO ONE to blame. Someone out there was smarter, testing more, doing more than I was, and I could change that.
That competitive spirit sticks with me to this day, so if you are black, brown, woman, whatever, find a job where “do people like me” can be trumped easily by “damn look at those results”. I might have had bosses who didn’t “like me” but my results in those early days was “undeniable”, so they kept me, supported me, etc.
Seer, should have been built inside someone elses company
After knocking on doors to try to get jobs and never getting an interview over 18 months, I started Seer at the age of 26-ish. Which is the other side of what my mom beat into my head…you won’t know if you didn’t get picked because you were black, but you can make them rue the day they didn’t give you a shot.
I guess that is another blessing as I see it, the company I built at Seer I would have gladly built inside someone else’s company, I couldn’t get a job though.
I NEVER wanted to start a business, and its why I don’t run this one anymore. I’d say 80% of the companies I tried to get a job at before starting Seer don’t exist and didn’t have GREAT exists, one actually asked me to buy them 7 years ago, two went on to be HUGE. One of the companies former CEOs has been a mentor of mine for like 7 years, he spends hours and hours every week working with black & brown youth in our city (and has done so since the early days), so his company didn’t overlook me b/c I was black, it could have been 100 other reasons, but not my race. Either way, worked out for him…and me (and we joke about this all the time).
I can not say I was overlooked because of my race at any of the 20–30 companies I tried to get into before starting Seer, how would I prove it?
But overlooking hiring me in 2001–2003, for whatever reason, it cost a whole lot of companies some headaches 🙂
If you feel like you’ve been overlooked for a job because of your race, gender, etc, I’ll give you the advice my mom gave me, get so good at your job, that they rue the day they didn’t pick you!
One of my favorite books is speed of trust, one of my top takeaways was this…
Trust is the grease in your gears
Think of gears in a bike…trust is grease in those gears (greased gears just run smooth with low friction), lack of trust is sand in those gears, and sand in those gears means every part of your body has to work harder to move the bike. Lack of trust in your people, your customers, etc is friction.
Friction slows down every relationship you have.
I’ve worked with a few people in my career that are naturally low trust people and there is nothing you can do to convince them, their world view is one of skepticism and low trust.
I’ve used those experiences to help me, I say man imagine the mental tax of going through life assuming everyone you meet can’t be taken at face value, what a mental tax. And I’ve chosen since being exposed to a few people like that, that I never want to be like that.
The price of that freedom is occasionally being taken advantage of. Price is well worth it.
I’ve always tried to run Seer based on a simple belief, you can trust your people to do the right thing. If you can’t do that then don’t work together. Cause the friction just isn’t worth it. Ask yourself, do your policies tell employees they are trusted?
If not, then you are saying “we need to protect ourselves from you abusing XYZ” and that leads your team to building policies that treat your customers like how you treat them…
How good customers get treated like bad ones…
CEOs hearing from your customer is how you find problems that they can’t solve, and that others have tried and failed. As our Innovation VP, talking to clients regularly is something I love. I get to find out what unlocking their big problems would do, but I also find out where we’ve lost trust because someone is “following the process” that we built at one time, but had no idea of the outcomes of following the process on clients.
After the experience I outline below, I’m going to start asking clients on calls, where do our policies make it hard for our team to work on a trusting relationship?
I don’t think Seer truly looked at client by client profitability until we were well over 15 million and 100 people. In the early days I watched CEO after CEO spend 15 hours on profitability and 15 minutes talking to customers. I did the opposite. It could have crushed us, but for us it worked.
The pros of putting more time into managing customers than calculations were several, clients didn’t have team members talking about hours, team members didn’t have to worry about “am I out of hours” and that helped us to build a more “we’re in this with you” relationship, which is how I love to treat my clients. The big cons is real too: people don’t know when to stop working, and that can lead to burnout, confusion, etc.
Turning a rip off into making myself a better client advocate
This is 100% on me, I didn’t dig into the fine print, but I wanted to write this up so others know too.
As a “data guy” I love getting my hands on new data sets, regularly.
So when I saw statista having data like this available I was stoked to get my hands on it!
But as you can see I needed the excel file, which triggers the pop up.
OK no problem, 59 bux, but then I had to sign up for 12 months I hesitated, but I wanted to get the data so I checked the money back guarantee policy and signed up, but I missed the “unused” part.
The thing I didn’t read is “unused” as I had to “use” the account to see the depth of the excel data, which was not available.
What I found out. The charts in the doc are the same in the excel sheet, I was hoping / assuming the “raw data” was what I was going to get and when I decided to cancel after downloading 2 reports, I was told I used the account and that people sometimes get 1 report and cancel and get their money back.
I couldn’t help but think this is an extremely low trust organization. I can’t imagine anyone there would look at what I did and think “he’s trying to pull one over”, but the policy inhibits a legit conversation.
I sent tweets and emails trying to get help, never got a response.
I refuse to let statista (the company I feel wronged me) take the $795 annual fee from me without a return on that massive waste of money.
As a result I will turn this “locked in / low trust” contract into something that makes me better as a CEO and I’ll always remember this incident as how it feels to be on the receiving end of a low trust relationship.
I hope statista changes to find some way to do the hard work of figuring out a way to both protect the business and trust customers.
I’m fascinated by resilience, the toughness that gets you through. I reflect daily on resilience, I try every day to do inconvenient things to keep me sharp. I also look for small things to make things better for the next person who comes after me.
I Hate making my bed, yes, so today I’m starting to make my bed every day (hopefully). I used to be the guy who would take the last fork, use it and throw it in the dishwasher, that inconvenienced the next person, who just reheated their meal, now they gotta open the drawer, see nothing is there, then go to the dishwasher, pick out some crusty fork, wash it, just to eat their meal. Maybe I could have just washed the fork after I was done. I’ve been washing dishes by hand for over a year since I had that revelation.
Don’t you wish this this pandemic was over? Ofcourse, but also not really.
It’ll be over when it’s over and when that time comes I’ll have an appreciation for a whole new set of things that I took for granted before. But I don’t long for it to be over, I can’t control that.
I’ll use this time to build resilience, make myself stronger in the face of adversity. I’ll find ways to avoid large crowds when I run and find new parts of our city I just never saw before. I’ll create new habits, I’ll spend more time with my boys in the weekends doing new things. I’ll be more aware of them growing up and I’ll be thankful for this time for giving me that. I’ll get better at understanding my company’s finances. This pandemic gave me an opportunity to show the team the depths of my support for them and their families.
I can not control the pandemic, I can control my perspective, my actions, and my learnings.
Is it weird working by yourself all day, nope, I made it my new normal. I learned to appreciate the silence the focus the “no one in the stall next to you”, the oh whose dishes are these… Oh they’re mine. Remember how we’d hate having to send that email about cleaning the sink? What we wouldn’t do to have co-workers around to fill that sink up again right now right? Perspective.
Everything has it’s moment. The grass is never greener. It’s different. Never greener.
Resilience is just like any other muscle
We all have the exact same muscles in our bodies, couple of biceps, hamstrings, and calves, so why do some calves look like this?
What’s the difference in somebody with lats and someone with wide lats? Practice. Doing hard things, resilience.
When you see those muscles you know it and you know the work someone had to put in to get there, looking at the muscle definition you instantly know the early mornings or late nights this person pushed through, the two-a-days the hours of food prep the cold days when they have to get the car started to go to the gym denying that pizza, that beer, that chocolate for protein shakes and chicken breasts.
When you see sculpted muscle on someone you know they weren’t just born that way it took practice, NO OTHER WAY that “just” happens. You can tell yourself genetics, sure and maybe that is, we don’t all have equal talents. What can you control? What food your put in your mouth, you can choose to do squats while you watch Netflix, do you?
When I see someone chiseled, I know I don’t want the sacrifice enough to get in that shape. But I don’t wish for my body to be like theirs because I know it could be, I just don’t want to put in the work, and that is OK.
Here are other ways I’ve practiced resilience
Practice being disliked
So my first thoughts on resilience as a muscle you practice on sculpting came a while back, when I practiced being disliked by sitting with a baby in first class solo on a 9-hour flight from Madrid to Philly it helped me build resilience because I had my newborn son sitting up there with me for half the flight, Nora and I had a rule if only one of us gets upgraded, you take the kid.
Practice through pain
It was 545 am and I was running before the sun was up on my normal route. The street lights were on and they cast a weird shadow on the concrete below causing me to miss a 4 inch break in the concrete from the root of a tree.
Needless to say I hit it in full speed, pacing about 8:30/mi. I was only .4 miles into my run when I hit it. I knew this was going to be bad. I bit it hard, my phone cracked and I fully fell out, knuckles were scraped, knees bloody, and my toe, yeah it was fucked. I could already see blood coming though my shoe.
In that moment I said what would David goggins do?
And I ran another 3 miles with blood oozing out of the top of my shoe. Why? Practice.
I woke up the next morning, this thing was deep black, it hurt like hell, I was scabbed on my knuckles and knees, so by 5:30 I was up for a 1.13 mile run at 11:14 pace.
4 days later I was back to something respectable
This is my resilience library, things I can pull on and remember when shit gets tough. If I could do that, I can definitely get through X.
If I can push through 3 miles with this pain, I’ll be injured some other time and I can remember that I pushed through once in the face of a tough injury and hopefully that reminder will get me through some other tough time where I need to will myself over some obstacle.
When’s the last time you practiced being disliked or doing something that you don’t wanna do for 30 days, or something that makes you completely uncomfortable just as practice?
Just like those muscles in your legs you get stronger with working that muscle, its never going to “just happen” you must practice!
Perspective — What me with resilience? Consistently broadening my perspective.
For me in these “tough” times I decided I was going to get up and run every morning until I got to 200k last month, it sucked doing it during the worst month in our company’s history, everything in me wanted to get to the office by 7:30 and get the day started, so I had to get up at 5:00 some mornings to make it happen, that sucked until it became my new normal.
As I ran at 5 or 6 in the morning I started seeing more and more people in their cars sometimes with their kids sleeping overnight. Here are 2 pictures of people I get to walk by almost every morning to do my run, neither was there 6 weeks ago, they are less than 100 steps from my front door.
This is just steps from my house.
50 feet from my front door this is his reality
Seeing that makes me resilient. It’s become a critical coping mechanism for me to continue to have great days in spite of all that’s going on at this time and having my toughest time in all my years of running the business. How can I sit down at my desk, having lost 2.2 Million dollars in contracts in the last 6 weeks and think my day is tough after seeing new families on my running route sleeping in their cars that were not there 8 weeks ago.
These folks love their kids as much as I do, sadly they just have to make different decisions than I do because we have different resources. This is part of why I appreciate living & working in inner cities it keeps me a bit more grounded than the alternative. I know I am taking more risk.
Volunteerism — Feeling others pain, who are experiencing life differently helps build resilience.
When I was 23 I started volunteering at a children’s hospital and in that time I was working at a job I really didn’t like. I was in my bubble of my whole life was about my career it felt like the end of the world to have a job I didn’t like, in spite of it being a good job, that paid me well, I had good benefits I had good health insurance so it was a good job. My dad was working in airplane hangars in the dead of winter, I was working a desk job on the internet.
How quickly I had forgotten about the days of working in warehouses making pathogen kits for con edison or packing books in an Amazon warehouse, my new reality just a few years later was that this desk job in the lovely air conditioning sucked.
It wasn’t until I started volunteering at the children’s hospital that I saw what I consider to be much more difficult decisions made by parents and pain of those parents and their concern for their children, every, single, day, that helped me to keep my “tough job” time in a different perspective. My point here is that volunteerism can broaden your perspective and in broadening that perspective at the age of 23, 20 years ago is helping me to deal with tough times TODAY.
Gratitude — How I start my day alters my mindset for the WHOLE day.
I started writing in a gratitude journal 19–20 months ago and as a result I think that’s helped me to be more resilient at these times as well, see, the first thing I see on my phone every morning is a prompt to remind me of what I should be thankful for.
What you open first sets the stage for your day. Social media — depending on who you follow it could be jealousy, it could be gossip, it could be gratitude, but who you follow dictates what you see. News — doom and gloom, if it bleeds it reads, bad news, the world is bad an unsafe. Email — Starting your day thinking about the pile of work you have.
Opening a gratitude app gets me starting my day in a very different mental state than opening Instagram. I have found that starting my day being prompted to remember the things that do have that I can (and should) be thankful for makes me resilient for everything else that comes at me the rest of the day. I’ve worked my gratitude muscle and its paying spades right now.
Slowing down when you want to speed up Another way I once practiced resilience, I spent a whole week not walking past anyone on the city streets and I was intentionally practicing not walking by slow people. So often I would hurriedly walk by someone, I’m always in a rush trying to optimize my route and my transit time.
I figured if I could train myself to slow the eff down, and walk slowly and put my hands behind my back and kinda just take it slow, a few times I got caught behind really old slow people over and over but I never allowed myself walk past them, it was an instance of practicing resilience that I can draw on today. I can slow down and I can draw on that experience reminding me when I just feel the need to get somewhere quick that I can slow down.
I’ve had to learn 2 things: 1 — to be careful not to use my approach to minimize others way of dealing with tough times, while this is not easy I work on it. 2 — to realize that even in speaking my truth, people may hear it and compare as well, which might make them think I am doing #1 (even if I am not).
So while resilience isn’t a muscle you can see like you can see really strong set of calves or a really wide set of lats. It functions like any other muscle those who practice that muscle over and over again through tough times through failure and make every day another day to try to get better at resilience, those folks might just be able to get through tough times with less collateral damage.
I am a sample size of one. So this might not work for you. I’m calm, I’m focused, I’m not down. I’m not missing what I used to have, I’m finding ways to be grateful for the new perspectives I’ve gained.
I hope that you practice resilience starting today whether it’s a month of washing dishes by hand or if it’s not walking past people on the sidewalk or practicing doing something that people don’t like…find your own way to practice resilience it’s a muscle that when you build it up, it will help you through some really tough times with a smile on your face in gratitude in your heart.
I just had 24 1:1’s (ish, a few were 2:1’s) in 40 hours, one reflection regarding moving up in an organization or laterally to a new challenge (also a promotion in my eyes) is this…
Crystal (not me) having a 1:1 in our SD office, this was just a better picture 🙂
If you want a promotion, consider not talking about it.
Your manager isn’t waking up saying, “who should I promote today?” or “I’mma go promote me some peeps”. Your manager instead is saying: Last quarter was ROUGH, who are the people on my team who solved a LOT of problems for me? Who helped me to see things that I didn’t see, proposed solutions, saw it through, whom couldn’t I live without? Who might have been able to help me tackle some of those problems? Who handled shit on their own while I was OOTO on vacation and crushed it, maybe even doing it better than me? I want a promotion, who could back fill MY roles when I go to make my pitch for a promotion? Who is connected to our team’s / company’s vision? I wanna keep them, let me think about promoting those people.
Talk about the problems you want to solve, that if you solve them are highly likely to put you in a position to get you that promotion.
Before you start, ask a BETTER QUESTION, saying I want to get promoted, doesn’t help you get any more information on HOW to get promoted.
Ask for the toughest feedback. Ask: Do you see me as someone who can see something through? Ask: Do you see me as a high performer? Why? Why not? Ask: What about my working style is most likely to self-sabotage me on this journey? Ask: You’ve seen 100s of people ask for promotions, what do most people get wrong in their approach, am I doing that? Ask: What’s most frustrating for you when someone indicates they would like a promotion? Ask: Think back to your last 3 promotions, what are the common threads about those three instances / people?
Find out what problems to solve:
Do a “skip level” and ask your managers/manager this question: Ask: “What is something that you / your managers just don’t have the time to get done?” Ask :“What is the value to you of solving that?” Think: “Are those problems I want to solve?”
Create a cadence of accountability:
Say: I intend to (love this language) create a doc that I’ll share my progress on that. (hint here’s one I built, part of a longer post, and it works well). 4DX was instrumental in helping me think about cadence of accountability & lead measures (below).
Ask: What leading indicators would tell you that we’re on the right path? Ask: When I hit roadblocks might you be able to make time to hear me out, advise me, or connect me with others who can help?
Talk about a plan B in advance:
Sometimes, the timing SUCKS and you’ve been working your plan, doing all the right things, and the company / your manager can’t promote you. This is an opportunity to ask a better question.
Ask: If I hit these goals and for some reason you can’t get the promotion approved, what can you commit to doing to help me / reward me? Ask: If this promotion is about money (and that is OK), you can ask, can I get bonused at that level even if I can’t immediately get the title? Ask: Will this role be filled before my timeframe? If it is how quickly might we be hiring another? Say: If I don’t get this promotion, I’m going to / not going to quit in 6 months, 12 months, etc.
Let your manager know (and dig deep to understand) why this promotion is important to you. Is it internal prestige, is it money, is it to earn respect, is it to have more authority? The more you dig into your “why” the better off you are in articulating plan B’s in case it can’t happen.
I’ve promoted several people who came to me saying they wanted a promotion too, my style has been to follow the above, do whatever works for YOU!
