Wil Reynolds

Category: Family

  • My mom passed away, what kind of son was I to her?

    My mom passed away, what kind of son was I to her?

    In the Beginning
    Me, sis, and mom

    So I got the call no one wants to get … son… I think your mom is dead.

    I got in the car, left the kids sleeping, hit auto-pilot and got taken from my house in Philly at 10pm to my parents house.

    There was a police car out front, the front door I entered and exited my whole life was open and I was scared but prepared for what I was likely about to see.

    I ran in, and there she was, mom on the floor of the living room. A breathing tube in her mouth, body covered, but you could see her bra was cut. The EMTs weren't there anymore, but the evidence of their presence was. A few small pieces left behind from the devices they used to try to bring mom back, unsuccessfully.

    The cop was there, my dads first words to me (and I kid you not) were… He’s here to make sure we don’t touch the body as we wait for them to tell us it wasn’t a homicide.

    Not: My goodness what am I going to do, Wil? But thats my dad.

    99% of you will read that and think, your dad was in a state of shock, and that might be true, but also maybe he wasn’t.

    My dad told me later that night… I wouldn’t cry if you died, son.

    He went on to explain…his mother had told him to prepare for her to die, since he was young, he saw her light herself on fire once after saying it. To cope or survive maybe he just had to callous that part of himself over.

    See my dad has been preparing for people he loved to leave him since he was 14, and I’ve now realized I was too, and I started earlier.

    It is why people expect me to be upset, they expect me to not be able to function, they expect that “It’ll hit me later” they’ll be surprised when it doesn’t.

    I’ve been preparing for death most of my life, I remind myself of those deaths coming, and it shapes my entire way of living life.

    Maybe the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree after all.

    What kind of son was I?

    The only question I wanted to answer was that one. I wanted ZERO people to call me, text me, talk to me.

    I didn’t want to hear…

    • “She was proud”
    • “She was talking to me about all you accomplished”
    • “She loved how you volunteer”

    Nope I wanted none of that shit, I went in a hole for 48–56 hours, just me and her things.

    I’ve read Mistakes were Made but not by me, I know it is going to be my default state to self justify being a good son that’s why I wanted no outside influence.

    Day 1 on this planet without my mom

    The next morning, or should I say same day, I got up at 9am and drove over. I started going through moms things. We needed to clean up the house, I wanted to take care of dad too. This was his ride or die for 55+ years. I got to the house, he was sleep still, I cracked the door to see if he was breathing (that is where my mindset was) and he was.

    So I got my coffee, and started doing my part, going through her things.

    My mom was meticulous with notes, calendars, organization etc. I knew someone was going to have to go through all this stuff and I wanted to do my part. Also I had my kiddos solo as Nora was in Nicaragua for 9 days or so, so I had to get back to the house by 2pm.

    I just sorted and sorted and sorted. Bills, Old bills, really old bills, insurance paperwork, bank accounts, thank you cards, doctors appointments, medical records, etc.

    Then it hit me, if I can scan these as PDFs I can store them in a shared family drive. Well I discovered this great feature of Google Drive.

    The Book: HumanKind

    As I sorted I took breaks to read the thank you cards, and then I came across my own card written 5 years ago on company thank you cards, we’ve always been a thank you card culture, I established that early.

    Funny enough one of the 5 books on her coffee table was Humankind, when I entered the house for some reason I noticed it, only feet from her lifeless body, a book I have bought a hundred copies of, a book we gave to every mother on mothers day this year, a book that will inspire you to do small things on how can we be better humans to each other, written by my buddy Brad Aronson who highlighted this about our culture. I stil have a few copies for Kindle if you can’t afford one.

    All of us will look over a body at some point and ask ourselves was I the best person I could be to THIS person?

    Reflection 1: Gentle nudges, we’re influencing our kids in ways we have no idea for good and bad…

    You will question in times like these “Did I tell this person how I felt?” and you’ll likely self justify that you did. It brought me comfort to read the thank you cards I had sent my mom dating back 10 years, the most recent one was July 1 2025. That comforted me, I didn’t catch Jesus once and sent her a thank you note, I did it, and kept doing it over the years.

    What kind of son was I to this person who is no longer here?

    I found my thank you cards to her where I poured my heart out to her telling her how much I appreciated her and her sacrifices to raise me, I sent them from Philly, from San Diego, and this year I had sent them from Morocco and from Iguazu Falls in Brazil. I could hold them, I could read the words, I could see she kept those cards. I didn’t have to assume I told her how I felt, I didn’t have to ask when is the last time I told her, I could see it, that provided comfort. I had the artifacts.

    Maybe I was a good son.

    Reflection 2: Learning about myself & how my mom influenced how I built Seer’s culture

    Anyone who worked or works at Seer knows I bring an intensity about trying to be great, I’ve written about this before and my mom’s impact. So the intensity, the “so what if you are black, work harder” parts I’ve talked about are there.

    But this process helped me to realize she was my roots in the most important parts of what I’ve done at Seer.

    At Seer thank you cards were huge (I say were because being remote has destroyed this part of our culture). They were everywhere — all this time I thought I just “came up with this idea on my own” but when I saw the amount of blank cards my mom had to write thank you notes, I reflected. This was something she always did, even in her toughest moments, she always wrote thank you cards, I had done the same, and I had brought this into my company.

    Her passing helped me to understand that while she never “made” me write thank you notes, I must have just seen her doing it over and over and over again to the point where at some point in my life, I started doing the same in my mid 20’s as I built Seer, writing thank you notes to people at the company. I wanted people to spread a little joy to each other, I wanted to build a company where the company offered nudges to be a better human and bring joy in small doses to clients.

    I also went through her checkbook, trying to find the bills she was paying so I could help my dad, both financially but also just logistically, this man doesn’t know how to write checks (I thought).

    In going through her checkbook, I saw the charities she donated to monthly: Ronald McDonald house, Shriner Hospital for Kids, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, St. Judes Hospital for Children.

    She wrote the checks, every month, by hand, I saw her balance and I saw how much she was donating, it was humbling.

    Then I reflected, where did this sense of community impact, and putting volunteerism at the core of the company come from? My mom never “made” me volunteer, or donate, she never nudged me to do it. Yet I must have seen it as a kid, remember I’m 49 years old, I haven’t lived in that house for 31 years, yet when I started my company the catalyst came from me volunteering at CHOP playing with sick kids, I wanted to do more of that, I wanted to work somewhere that would let me volunteer my tail off and also kick ass at work. It was hard to find a company like that so I built one.

    Mom was the foundation of two of the things I am most proud of about Seer.

    1 — If I’m going to run a company, I want to make it a place that when people work there that makes their moms proud

    2 — If I’m going to run a company, I want to make it a place that tries to nudge you to be a better human, by surrounding you with other kind, good, kick ass people, who care about their communities and put in the work.

    What kind of son was I to this person who is no longer here?

    Building a company definitely made my mom proud, but I think it is HOW I built that company that makes her super proud. I was aligned with her without even knowing it. We were both writing checks, putting in time, and writing copious thank you cards to people who impacted our lives.

    I travel with thank you cards in my bag, I even kept the old stamp sheets during the pandemic to make sure I was sending out cards to team members the same way.

    Writing thank you notes on a flight

    I will be keeping and using my moms random stack of blank thank you cards to send out even more, so look out for them.

    Maybe I was a good to her.

    Reflection 3: The big cry revealed how it was always important to make my mom proud

    I asked Crystal to message the company, and tell them to kinda leave me alone, I didn’t want any messages I didn’t want any interruptions to the journey I was on, I wanted to put myself through the ringer to answer this question, I wanted to be tough on myself, and I didn’t want the outside world impacting that brain space, telling me how good I was and biasing me more than my natural human inclination to not want to admit I could have been a better son to my mom, who had just passed away.

    The idea that I wanted to build a company where if you worked there, and your parents google’d us, they’d think…this sounds like a place that will care about my kid and help them continue to be someone I’m proud of.

    This is the message she sent:

    Hi Everyone,

    On behalf of Wil and his family, I’m deeply saddened to share the news of the unexpected passing of his mother, Elizabeth (“Liz”) Reynolds. As Wil and his family support one another and process life without their loved one, expect Neal to reschedule meetings and events as needed, and for Wil to be in and out over the next few weeks. Please reach out to Neal or myself for anything you might need.

    Liz is hands down one of the most wonderful humans to ever be part of Seer’s story. She was the original inspiration that drove so many of Seer’s favorite traditions over the years from the “Make your momma proud” concept on our early Seer website featuring our baby pictures, to the flowers our mother figures receive on Mother’s Day. In Seer’s early days, she would often lend a hand around the office, helping with checks, contracts, filing… anything needed. Her warmth, love, and support helped shape the heart of this company.

    We know many of you will want to reach out to support Wil and his family and he’s deeply grateful for that.

    Here’s what we ask at this time: Please do not reach out directly to Wil or comment on this thread. Let’s give him and his family the privacy and space they need to grieve together.

    If you’d like to show your support, you’re welcome to leave an emoji reaction on this message.

    Let’s continue to make Wil’s momma Liz proud by showing up for our clients, our community, and each other — living the values she inspired in Wil, Seer and all who had the privilege to know her.

    I read this at my kitchen table, as I was putting out plates for my kids dinner (remember nora was in Nicaragua and trying to get home), and I burst into tears mid sentence with my kids. I mean all out cry.

    Crystal posted this picture too, and I zoomed in on the make your momma proud part. This image is from out OLD OLD website. But there it was I’ve been trying to make my mom proud, and other team members moms (and dads) proud since the beginning. I hadn’t reflected on how I weaved that into the website so early on, from banners for hiring to our web page.

    The old Seer Interactive “about us” page

    God I remember those baby pics…imagine starting a job and one of your requirements is to get a baby pic, often times you gotta hit up your parents to get them, and they are going to ask why — and they get to share with them a small moment of who this company is, and we get to bring a little joy to their parents, what parent doesn’t love an excuse to go through old baby photos and take a walk down memory lane? The way we built this company nudged that opportunity. You better believe it also lead to a few emails with parents that I got to connect with over the years…fuck a professional headshot, lets bring back our baby pictures.

    We still have some left over banners on our current site, but this was our recruiting tagline, and my true north.

    Making more money doesn’t make your mom proud — I already said this much…

    In this article on my “success” I said: “I want to make my mom proud,” … “Is she any more proud of me with a company worth 100 million or 300 million? No.”

    So many of us professionals keep chasing $$ as the metric to success, and we think that financial success will make our parents proud, but for me, I knew that going from 5 million to 10 from 10 to 20, and 20 to 30, never really increased my moms pride in me. If anything it is that as the company grew so did our impact on people in our community, our donations, etc.

    The reality of growing any business like that is that while it makes your family proud it also takes you away from them.

    I wrote about that here and what I do to try to limit it, because business growth can unintentionally creep up on removing you from your family.

    Also every new employee at Seer sits with me to talk about how and why I started this company, the first slide in the deck is a pic of my mom. I had her in the bedrock since the beginning.

    What kind of son was I to this person who is no longer here?

    It isn’t typical for slide 1 in a company about us presentation to be the CEOs mom, just even the process of giving her those “flowers” every month to my team, sparked a reminder in me to call her, thank her, tell her how much she mattered to me, because I was telling others too. The intentionality I had around making my mom proud, made me feel good, it gave me another set of artifacts to reflect on. When I gave the “seer onboarding chat” with our interns 80 hours after her death it was hard to get through, but I went through with it and got through some tears, but I will continue to tell every new person at Seer who she was to me, keeping her memory alive and questioning am I still making her proud.

    Reflection 4: Making her proud 3x in the 24 hours before her passing

    I started feeling ok about myself as I reflected on how was I living my life 24 hours before she passed and if she knew what I was doing would she have been proud of me?

    Part A: We talked the night before

    I was in a NYC hotel with my kiddos when the phone rang, it was mom, I picked up…

    I wasn’t a “talk on the phone with mom” guy, but I did from time to time, every couple weeks or so, and this time we talked the night before, let me tell you why.

    When I was 10 my friend Nigel died of cancer, and when I was 14 my friend Carl died of a drowning. Like my dad, I knew life was fragile at an early age.

    When I go on runs, I often reflect and ask myself

    What would you do differently if someone told you today that you would die in 10 years, then I cut it to 5, then 3, then 2, then 1, then 6 months, then 3 months.

    The idea is simple, anything I come up with I should do today / soon because tomorrow isn’t promised.

    Heck even for a blog post I’m like, I must get it out, in case I pass away. It’s deeply ingrained.

    I recently realized how their deaths impacted how I live my life, and I asked my mom to do some detective work and find their parents names and numbers, and their sisters / brothers so I can call them and tell them how 39 years later, how their sons / brothers passing impacted me and how it helps me value life, they should hear that because I bet you they don’t. I thought it might bring some relief, joy, or something to know I never forgot and I think about them often and while we couuldn’t keep them here, I used their passing at a young age to make me a better father, husband, son, etc.

    I reflected on what I was doing and thought…imagine if one of my kiddos lost a friend at a young age and one day called me up and asked me to help them find that person’s parents to say thank you and let them know what I said above, how would I feel about my kids doing that? I instantly knew … insanely proud.

    Part B: Fun with my boys

    Nora was in Nicaragua, I had the kids solo for 9 days, the weekend would be a time to catch up on all the work I couldn’t get to during the week, get them some pizza and tablets and give me 5 hours to play catch up. NOPE.

    I took the kids ot NYC we went to the spy museum and did the spy games, it was SOOOO much fun. We went to the Nintendo store and the Lego store. We went around NYC for 1 day and then head home.

    She never got to see her son and her husband have those moments, she was the only person to provide those. Now why would this make my mom proud? I broke the cycle.

    First, my dad never spent time with me like this, he worked, he provided, but the idea of spending time with me when I was this age was non existent. My dad met his dad for the first time when he was 16, and only 5–6 times after that.

    Here I am having legit tons of fun, sending her pictures of the fun we’re having, and she could sit back in her chair and think… my son actually makes time for his kids but also looks like he thoroughly enjoys these boys.

    Part C: I had the chance to see my mom 4 hours before she died and I decided not to

    Leaving NYC to go home, get caught up on work… Nope… it was an opportunity. My uncle (her brother) just moved into a new place, he was proud of it. It was 2 hours and 20 minutes from my hotel in NYC, I put it in the GPS and headed to his new place with the boys to watch the eagles game with him and enjoy his company. I could have watched the eagles game with her, drove a LOT less that day, I would have left the house around 5pm and she passed around 9pm.

    I chose to go see her brother, I wouldn’t be prioritizing getting out there to his place that often because it was far away, and his place was new and he wanted to share the new place with people.

    My mom also wanted me to have relationships with her brothers and sisters, whether or not I did is a different story.

    I stack rank people in my life, so that when I run out of time, I know I spent it with the people highest up, cause it is just a reality…we run out of time for all the people in our lives.

    Nora, the kids, my mom, etc — eventually we all just run out of time to be everything to everyone in every role we play.

    Anyways, I spent time with my uncle instead of my mom, but I spent time with someone who just lost their spouse a few months ago (my uncle) and it was someone in our family… my mom would have wanted that, he was on his own — and guests brought him joy, and I love spending time with him talking smack on text about the eagles, why not do it in person w/ the kiddos?

    Little would I know, just a few hours, her time would be expiring.

    The wrap up

    Only we know the times when we could have shown up for our loved ones and didn’t, the times we could have helped them but didn’t, we don’t post those things publicly, but those are the exact things that we carry with us when they pass that leads to a lot of regret. When’s the last time someone wrote about skipping time with mom on social? Right.

    That’s why I went in a hole for 2.5 days, being tough on myself… would my mom have wanted me to swing by her house for a visit 2x a month yup, some months I did and other times I went 2 months without seeing her, that is why I wanted this time to reflect on if I was the son I wanted to be, and it was these last 24 hours before her passing, the thank you cards, and other small steps that help me to realize yeah, I am at peace with this.

    If there was anything I could bestow on you that is helping me through this time its these things:

    1 — Think about your death and the death of others often, ask yourself if you are being the person you want to be, if no…change things.

    2 — Leave artifacts, it helps you to know what you said to someone, not just what you think you said

    3 — Define what success looks like to you in every role you play, what is acceptable to you. Don’t let others define what being a good husband, son, father, uncle, etc means, instead do the work, define it for yourself and reflect on if you are or are not.

    I had decided if I came out of this feeling like I wasn’t the son I wanted to be (on the macro), that it would spark me to be better for the people who are still here with me, and that would be the best last lesson mom would have helped me learn.

    I’ll miss you mom, I miss having someone to text when the sixers and eagles play. I wish I could text you now, cause they BLEW THAT LEAD against the bulls last night, but I’ll text your 2 remaining sibs on that.

    Addendum / the role AI played in this process.

    When you have a parent who passes away, the more time you spend on logistics the less time you have to sit with your thoughts and memories, and cry your way through blog posts.

    It was AI that trained the tesla that got me to the house at a tough time.

    Autopilot keeps people safe. Driving somewhere to see a loved one who might be dead is something we all will go through.

    Driving at times like these is rife with blurry eyes from the tears, an inability to think clearly, physical shaking, and so many emotions… yet we’re darting to a place trying to manage those emotions and their physical toll while driving a car through red lights, switching lanes, making poor decisions, and fighting the physical toll of shaky hands, eyes filled with tears, all of which don’t help most of us drive better.

    NotebookLM is an unlock!

    I built a notebook LM that scanned in all her docs, notes, calendars, checkbooks as PDFs. That helped me share with the family a central place to ask questions, there weren’t papers “back at the house” whenever I could call another credit card to cancel her card, they would ask for her SSN, I would just ask the NotebookLM, and boom. It really helped me be present.

    Every time I am on the phone with someone, I just fire up notebookLM and get answers about her will, her bills, you name it.

    The real unlock is that it let me (and my family) spend more time thinking about her memory and laughing and crying and just sitting with the sadness then working through boxes of papers and docs.

    Using notebookLM to manage moms paperwork let us spent more time on memories and grief

    I ran a deep research query to see how much I talked about her and what I said.

    I feel like I talk about my mom all the time and the role she played, I have the blog posts and other artifacts, but deep research gave me an opportunity to see my quotes and what not in my own words, and it brought back stuff I forgot I even said.

    My prompt was simple:
    Find wil Reynolds references to his mom across podcasts, interviews, his company website etc. anything related to his mom.

    It came back with this:

    If my kids said these things and backed them up about me, I’d be pretty dang proud of them.

    So when I ask myself… what kind of son was I to this person who is no longer here?
    I think a pretty good one.

    Note: I left out 1 thing that my mom likely carried with her that disappointed her about who I was at the time of her passing. It wouldn’t be right to post since it is about my role in others lives in my family, but I will say this, I evaluated my role in how that thing turned out, I put myself through the ringer and decided, I did something that had it worked out would have made her very proud, but it went sideways and caused problems in our family & that she had to carry with her, and I am also VERY OK with that too, I know my heart was in the right place and I’m giving myself grace on that.

  • Anti-side hustle / Parenting as side hustle

    Every week anyone in our company can submit a social question, this week someone asked…do you have a side hustle, if yes, tell us about it — link out to it. I loved the question for a bunch of reasons:

    1. It came from a brand new employee, meaning she felt comfortable in her first month disclosing her side hustle. She leaned into our values around transparency and trusted us enough to believe we would support her (she was right).
    2. This dialogue enables others to see “oh this is a place where I can talk about my side hustle w/o immediate assumptions about “dedication to the company”.
    3. Lastly, it was an opportunity for me to learn about other’s interests, someone (also brand new to Seer) owns a 10 acre kelp farm and in 2022, produced ~4,000 wet/pounds of sugar kelp, sequestering 894lbs of Carbon and removing 71.5lbs of Nitrogen from the water.

    This was all GREAT right? Yup. But it was 2 answers that really stood out to me as brave.

    Here is one:

    Alternative perspective — I quit mine!

    I’m at a phase of life where I don’t get a lot of time to myself. Selling my me-time did not make me happy even though I was making good money.

    I also made peace with the fact that I don’t want to be an entrepreneur when I grow up. I used to read and hang with a lot of people who had this attitude like “you’re a sucker if you’re not trying to go out on your own.” I understand some people have a high intrinsic need to be self-employed, or are wired to easily juggle 2+ jobs — that’s not me, and so the sacrifices (which I think most agree are real) are simply not worth it.

    Why did I love this? It was brave. In a world of more, having enough and verbalizing it gets you some stares, it can make people think you aren’t ambitious. I bet there are people who kind feel like they should have a sode hustle because not having one could make them look like they aren’t ambitious.

    Also I love how Jason owned NOT having a side hustle, he could have just not responded.

    So often once you got kids, they become the main hustle and your job feels like the side hustle.

    Side hustles & main hustles have a cost — time away from other things that matter.

    Then I got another answer from one of our 20 “emily’s” that was a picture of her kid — and she said…THIS is my side hustle. It’s funny how we have equated side hustle in many ways to ambition, creativity, growth in BUSINESS, but when you break the attributes of a side hustle down, you could replace etsy shop with our kids names 🙂

    We put in time, hoping to grow them into good little people someday (our ROI), we pick ourselves up when we just don’t wanna drive to another practice, blend another smoothie, answer another question, etc — these little kids come into our zooms, get sick and ruin our plans and we get through it anyway.

    Cheers to people who own, NOT having a side hustle because it has a cost that individually we all must determine the value of. Cheers to all you parents out there, doing this job is a whole other type of side hustle, yet b/c it doesn’t have a balance sheet and an EIN number we have somehow devalued that work.

  • I know my wife is safe & I have “bad” tech companies to thank for that

    The company you hate one day is the same one that gives you piece of mind the next day.

    Phones built by slave labor in warehouses
    Bros are take over parks from locals
    When it comes to the big tech companies & diversity, messages like this about how bad Google (or any other company) is are out there, over and over

    Facebook is letting politicians make ads with false information, what?

    Amazon is killing people by overworking drivers, (wonder how much of that is offset by the amount of people who would be driving just a few miles from their houses and dying in car accidents on their way to buy goods and services?)

    But today I’m deeply thankful for tech, even though the companies aren’t always doing the things I wish they did.

    Here’s why I’m grateful…over the last 17 years my wife has been going to Nicaragua a LOT, and I don’t mean some surf town eco-lodge, she is in deep, rural Nicaragua working with her team members and employees, check up on projects they are working on etc. Why? She co-founded a water non profit that was acquired a few years years ago, but she’s been at this for 17 years!

    This photo is about 10–12 years ago, what I call the most scary years for me.

    I used to drop her off at the airport, scared AF and it could be weeks before I heard from her again.

    Do you know what that feels like? Some of ya’ll might, but it was tough, all I had was my imagination on if she was OK, if she got dengue fever, if she got kidnapped, if she was on one of those buses full of people that slides down hill in rainy season.

    Different type of daily commute, huh?

    I had no way of knowing for weeks and weeks. Now I’m an optimistic guy, so I don’t think like that, but its hard not to when hours and hours go by without any communication. Nora nonchalatly would talk about bribing people, what?

    Nicaragua has a pretty tough history, especially with the US, Google it.

    She can tell you stories of how transportation from the airport to the town works. Buses are ok, but can be a bit dangerous. So someone, someone she trusts is picking her up in their pick up truck with 2–6 other people, she may or may not know. She will be sitting in the back of a pickup truck for 7 hours on mostly unpaved roads with strangers in a country where things are at times are scary? And I won’t hear from her? Awesome.

    This is the paved part, but 7 hours in the back of this, with a refrigerator in a tarp, 7 HOURS!! It sucks.

    As proud as I was that that was my girl, eventually my wife, it sucks to sit around with your phone on extra loud cause if she can get WiFi for 2 seconds over a span of 2–3–4 weeks you ain’t missing that call, if you miss it could be 2 more hours or 2 more weeks before you hear from them again.

    You hope people protect her there.

    Thank God for the people who care for her when I’m at home nervous.

    You hope the helicopter insurance doesn’t need to be used, but you just don’t know.

    Luckily about 7 years ago I made it myself so I got to see where she works, that did make things a bit better. My first trip internet was non existent, but at least we were together, taking cold showers and eating rice and beans something fierce.

    I worried a little less, and then slowly over time with each time we went my phone started to get more and more signal. One day a hotel showed up, so she wasn’t staying at the priests house or some rando’s house anymore. By my third trip I had 2g the whole time. so I could get a text. That was 5 years ago.

    Fast forward to today… Signal works everywhere.

    Thanks Tech Bros and Gals

    Whatever tech bros worked on WiFi, and 3g networks, Idon’t care if you were a group of all white dudes or not. You enable me to be consistently connected to my wife for the next 10 days, while I hold shit down at home, you help me worry less.

    Whatever gentrifying bros built Google maps thank you. I want you to be a better company, but I can not deny that your impact on me and many people like me is REAL. Thank you for that.

    I’m able to sleep easy watching my wife take the 7 hour drive in real time on Google Maps using shared location, you know how calming that is?

    She is with a man I don’t know and I can’t do anything for her, but I can watch her route and know she’s going where she’s supposed to be going.

    She and i texted most of her trip, she even referenced that while in the drive she could watch me reading to the boys on our nest cam. I would have never thought in a million years that her mobile internet would be strong enough to do that.

    We texted the whole way there, laughing and joking. It was meaningful and at that time, maybe selfishly I didn’t think about how much I’m trying to avoid posting to Facebook and Instagram because I just think the shit is fake AF, I didn’t think about how much I dislike tech bro culture, or how much I wish Google would lead. I got to know my wife was safe, and not just once, multiple times a day. Back in the day if I got 1 call or 1 email in 10 days i was stoked. Now we can communicate all day. I’m thankful for tech, nothing is all good, no company is all good or all bad. Including mine.

    Yesterday we used Duo and she was able to watch me give the boys a bath (they splashed the hell outta me), they got to see momma and say hi and all that jazz, just years ago we got NONE of that interaction, just worry.

    Now instead of me seeing the pictures 2 weeks or 3 weeks after she takes them, I get them in real time.

    So to every one of you who has worked on internet, wifi, 3g, 2g, image compression, video compression, mobile phones, facebook messenger, etc. Today I’ll say thank you! Thank you. You have given me a peace of mind that I appreciate, it doesn’t mean I love your companies all the time, but I’m thankful and appreciate what they have accomplished.

    If you’ve read this far, I’d love for you to think of something that hit me on my last trip to waslala, Nora founded a clean water non profit, and she is still going back to complete her work to eradicate the water crisis in waslala 17 years later, yet she’s able to post videos to Facebook.

    Let that sink in. And remember there’s no business model in getting clean safe drinking water to people, in the last 10 years they went from no phones / internet to 3g. But in 100s of years they still require non profits to help them get clean water.

  • Robbing my kids of being raised by blue collar parents

    This morning, my son says, we’re going on vacation soon. I can’t help but frown. I want to say… Son, your whole effing life till this point has been a vacation, you’ve seen more countries by 4 than I did by 30. He’s 4, he doesn’t get it, nor should he, he’s a kid. So I laugh it off but it prompts me to write this post that’s been brewing up inside.

    Inheritance, yeah right, these kids aren’t getting squat

    Ok, that’s a lie, they are getting 1/2 the value of a home in our neighborhood. That’s it. Everything else goes to charity.

    My kids have ridiculous privilege & advantage! Giving them an inheritance ain’t gonna help them be grounded that is for sure. Whenever people ask me about wealth and helping set up future generations of the Reynolds clan, they are always shocked by my position:

    1 — My kids ain’t never lifted a finger at Seer Interactive. Just like anyone else on the street who hasn’t helped Seer doesn’t get a dime why should they get a chance to “run things” someday, nope. They can build their own thing, just like I did, my parents gave me values, they didn’t help me with my valuation.

    2 — My kids have effed up my career, yeah I said it. Having kids and also trying to be a decent dad (and husband) means I have said no to a lot of client meetings, client work, and conferences. For instance my wife has a conference in Africa for a week, I’m not doing conferences where I could have picked up work, bonded with team members, and saw clients to personally, make sure we’re living up to our end of the bargain. So having kids has been a net negative on growing the value of Seer if you think about it. Worth it, absolutely, but I have to be honest.

    3 — I’ve done enough. The connections they’ll have, the network, the privilege they’ll have, the schools, tutors, experiences. I think I’ll have done enough to set them up for success. Heck their “uncle” is Rand Fishkin 🙂 His network is vast. Their “Aunt” De-De (his wife) just won a James Beard award. Yeah these kinds have a stronger network that I ever did.

    My Dad Missed Every Christmas, and I don’t love him any less because of it.

    My dad pretty much missed every Christmas, and I never thought anything of it. “Son, I can work a double” is what he’d say every time, he could double down that night shift and make that money, which paid for those gifts under the tree. It was my normal, dad wasn’t there on Christmas.

    My mom had one of those Christmas Club savings accounts, saving a little each pay period to provide us gifts. They budgeted and as kids we knew that things had to be planned financially. We never wanted for anything, but we saw them sitting around looking at clipboards of our finances (my mom was a legal pad and clipboard kinda gal).

    Could you imagine today if I said to my family, Oh I’m going to work on Christmas!!?? I’d be revered as the worst dad ever, no work/life balance, my priorities are off, etc etc.

    Even “worse” my dad took vacations with us maybe 2/3rds of the time. He’d say, I work and pay for it, you guys go. To be honest I think he’d rather that. Vacations were every 3 or 4 years, not 2–3 trips per year like my kids get.

    For many of us kids of blue collar parents, who worked doubles, night shifts, holidays for that extra scratch, we don’t love them any less because they weren’t there, let me not speak for everyone. I know I didn’t. My parents worked not to be broke.

    Being a regular kid with regular parents made me EVERYTHING I am today.

    I know I can’t give that to my kids. Sure I can try to expose them to things, but exposure to homelessness for 2 hours at a soup kitchen is nothing when in 2 weeks you are taking a “vacation” to France, Spain, and the UK with your family. It’s just a different life and I feel that being raised that way was INSTRUMENTAL in how I turned out and where I am today and its sad to think, I can’t really give that to my kids. I can give them parts of it, but never the whole. That saddens me.

    I dream…would my kids be better people if they were raised the way I was? I can’t help but think, yes they probably would. I also think, man my parents never even thought about this kinda crap.

    I listen to the conversations of my friends, we talk about privilege, we talk about cultural capital, me too movements, micro-aggressions, diversity and inclusion, micro-greens, blog post ideas, and I can’t help but think…

    Listen to yourself Wil, you talk about things your parents never contemplated…

    Here’s an example…I was raised to know that privilege existed, but my parents spent zero time thinking about it, talking about it, they stated facts… Wil, if you and a white kid are both the same level, most times the white kid is going to get picked over you in sports, jobs, life. So work harder, we don’t wanna hear some kid not as good as you got picked for student council, work harder Wil…this is the world. I can’t help but think that maybe what makes me who I am is the fact that I was raised this way my parents gave ZERO FUCKS on talking about what’s fair, they talked about what’s REAL and prepared me for that. End of discussion.

    Here’s another example:

    Me: Mom / Dad I want a car with tinted windows and a bazooka bass tube.
    Parents: you know being a black man you are more likely to get pulled over, you get a car like that you are making it more likely, we aren’t paying for your tickets or bailing you out of jail, get it?
    Me: Got it. (only got pulled over once in that car, ha!)

    Or another:

    Me: Dad I wanna take French.
    Dad: French, how the fuck you gonna use that? I don’t work 3 jobs and pay to send you to private school for French. You are taking Spanish.
    Me: Ok. End of discussion.
    Dad: Yeah, end of discussion.

    Today, my son would be like I have “agency” or “choice” back then it was like I pay I make the rules.

    Here is what my parents did:

    Pay bills & save $$ (for retirement)
    Watched a TV show or two
    Tried to raise good kids
    THAT’S IT!

    Is that life better for my kids? I dunno, but its simpler as a parent.

    And “raise good kids” wasn’t conversations around, screen time, or exposure to other cultures, some study on whether the kid should study Mandarin or Spanish, or my dad asking himself “am I gone from the kids too much” — it was:

    The definition of raising Good Kids was simple too:

    Get good grades, no goofing around
    Be respectful. You better be calling people Mr. and Mrs.
    You finish what you start, you never quit on things you said you would do.

    I wonder if this will ever go away?

    Even the way we walk about raising our kids… I recently took off most of the day for my son’s birthday, Nora asked “I thought you were taking the whole day”, to which I stopped and thought… am I setting my kids up someday to be sad or think dad doesn’t care if I don’t take a day off for their birthday, its like look kid my world doesn’t revolve around you, no way am I taking off the whole day.

    And there it is, once again, the questions that I as a parent w/ unlimited PTO…should I have taken more or less time, am I doing right? I can hear my dad over my shoulder, boy fuck that. Do the best you can and let the chips fall where they may, be honest with yourself, know where your heart is, and let it go. Get back to freaking work you snowflake.

    Thanks Mom & Dad. If there’e anyone I should be spoiling, it’s you guys!

  • The 1 question that avoided trouble in my marriage

    So, we were driving from San Franciso to Salt Lake City, we had just wrapped up 3 months in San Diego and were driving back across country. Me. Nora. Coltrane.

    First Cross Country Trip

    I have this need to feel present with my team, so I knew that by opening a second office travel was gonna spike.

    At this point…Nora had been able continue a good part of her research work, while in San Diego on our first, & second, & third, cross country trip. She was wrapping up her PhD. I also started to realize that I was being asked for/wanted to do a LOT more travel, conferences, client travel, new office etc.

    I know deep down I’m more likely to be a yes man, than a no man, after all yes is where all possibilities start right? Very few things start with a no. So even though I was saying no to more and more conferences (as I wanted to up client travel), I still didn’t know if I was traveling too much for her and I.

    The Question: How much travel is too much?

    So I asked her as we pulled out of SF… the whole country ahead of us… How many days in a month could I be gone without us traveling together? See I need boundaries, I need checkpoints.

    Nora being the amazing & supportive partner she is said…I’m not answering that question, I never want to get in the way of your career / things you want to do.

    Me: Please, I don’t need an exact, just a gut number. I don’t want to come home one day for you to be like “We Gotta Talk”. Let’s get ahead of this…Nora: I’m not doing it.
    Me: Ok, fine then I’m not talking to you for this whole 10 hour stretch until you give me a number
    Nora: Fine
    Me: Fine, cranks up some audiobook,

    3 hours later…

    Nora: FIVE!
    Me: Five what?
    Nora: Five days.
    Me: Perfect.
    Nora: But don’t ever feel like you can’t do you…

    That day, somewhere between SF and Salt Lake City in August 2013, we had a boundary.

    Each time after that as I got asked for travel, I now could fight my “yes” style and could quickly scan my other commitments and determine if going to conference X or client Y was going to cause me to bump up against maximum days. The great part was knowing that my wife was OK if I went over but for me again, it gave me a boundary to start from.

    If I was smart I would have checked in on “5” over the years as I never did and we added 2 kids in that time, but even in spite of not doing that I finally decided to go back and look at the data.

    First step was to get all of my travel into excel, so I used this tool:
    https://www.gcal2excel.com/how-to-export-google-calendar-to-csv/

    I had to do a lot of manual cleaning, but once I did. I was able to look at the data..

    I looked at 3+ years of data, specifically stacking travel with family (doesn’t count) vs travel with family (counts)

    of 39 months, 19 of them had over 5 days (when including with family)

    That is a LOT of days of travel.

    One thing that stands out, is I’ve traveled 290 days in approximately 1100 total days in the last 3 years an 4 months, 230 days were with nora / the boy(s).

    This does not include the weeks that Nora was gone running her “baby” in Waslala, Nicaragua) solo, but it does include the times when I went with her down there.

    So if you are wondering, how many times did I break 5, twice.

    I wonder how many angry nights, of “he’s out there running around doing his career, and I’m putting mine on hold” have we avoided, not just the fights, the shitty sentiment that someone else is making all the sacrifices for travel.

    I decided to write this after one of our alumni, who came back after a couple years started traveling I asked her if she has talked to her significant other as we started asking her to travel more and more, and she hadn’t yet. Well I hope that she has, even the most supportive partners will appreciate it.

    PS sorry if this post had typos or wasn’t cohesive, I wrote it while the boys napped after we had a great morning in Madrid, tomorrow I gotta work, today play 🙂

    A great day in Madrid

  • Leaving my startup to support Nora’s startup

    Saturday I fly to the most remote place on the planet and drive on the worst roads, all in the name of clean drinking water for all, and showing my wife that I got her back.

    image

    (Villagers digging 3 ft trenches to lay the pipe to run the water from the mountains to the tap, if you’ve ever donated to water for waslala, your $$ goes to the hardware and tools you see here, not labor).

    Not only do I love the challenge of being the best manager, friend, CEO, etc, I often ask myself, am I being the best husband, am I doing what I can to make sure Nora and I spend quality time together, and that this business doesn’t consume our lives.

    Do I get consumed by work, then come home and sleep, only to wake up again the next day and do it all over again? Its harder than ever, and I think that is why I smiled when Nora and I compared frequent flier miles to see how we fared this year, she was at about 51k, and I was at 68k…as I looked at those numbers side by side, I smiled a bit.  It was my reminder and my proof that although this company takes me all over the world that I keep Nora as a priority and try to move dates around to ensure we get to spend time together as often as humanly possible.

    Luckily Nora is getting her PhD in Urban Education at Temple University and that her dissertation work allows her to do some work from anywhere, but she also has made sacrifices (yes traveling the world to Nora in many ways is bittersweet, its a sacrifice too) like not teaching this past year so she and I could be together more, but that is for another day…something many people don’t know is that my wife has a startup as well, its been around a little longer than SEER, as she started it while still in college. 

    Nora and I never lose track of the fact that we are wickedly lucky, we travel like crazy and have seen so much of the world in the last 2.5 years (I filled a passport in that time) so it came as a shock to me one day in a London hotel, as Nora and I hopped from flight to flight and train to train she turned to me and said… “I don’t want my life to be following you around the world.”  – If you know me, you know I react quick, but this time I listened.  She went on to explain that if we don’t take time while we are traveling to enjoy where we are, that she might as well stay home.

    That kinda hit me like a ton of bricks because, she was right.  She had her own startup, and her desires to change the world (at least for people in rural Nicaragua who need clean water and for kids in urban settings to get closer to equal education). That is a BIG part of why I married her, she had real strong desire to have an impact on this world. I put myself in her shoes…I totally got it, and not only did I get it, it made sense, so from that moment forward I have always made sure that when Nora and I travel we always add a day or two so we can just “kick it”, visit one of her friends in that country / city. 
    So when I get a chance to fully support her startup, I do.  Supporting Nora’s startup and being there (Waslala Nicaragua) is the POLAR opposite of her supporting mine.  Let me tell you about my first (and I thought last) trip to Waslala Nicaragua, it SUCKED.  Our Limo picked us up in Managua, this limo had 3-4 other people in it and was uncovered, oh its called a pickup truck. 
    image
    View from the “limo” & below was one of the “passengers” 🙂

    image
    So we settled in figured who was going to sit where, and off we went….8 hours straight in the back of the truck, over unpaved roads, I had bruising all over my back, I was covered in dirt, and the road was so bumpy (for 6 of the 8 hours) that I couldn’t hold a book, or an iPad in front of me long enough to read anything, I was defeated, and just listened to rage against the machine and gangsta rap for as long as I could, and told no one to talk to me.
    Take a look at the road – 8 hours of that was brutal!
    image
    Once we got there, Nora was a sight for sore eyes, people throughout the town wanted to catch up. See her “Rand”, “Will”, “Tom” and “Richard” live in waslala and while Nora knows those dudes from our time traveling, I never met those people for her.
    We arrived and showered, I can’t speak Spanish that well, so I couldn’t communicate well either.   Over the week I was there I met people who Nora’s startup impacted, and while they couldn’t tell me in words, you could see the sincerity in the people, her “startup” was helping them live better healthier lives. 
    Nora went back for a month recently to complete her research and just couldn’t get it all done, so she asked me if I could go back once again, and given all that was going on in the company (2 new offices, tons of hiring, tons of awesome projects, working on corporate governance, relocations, HR, Re-orgs, etc) I said, I don’t think so…I’m stressed out just thinking about it.  It was going to be super tough.  
    I knew she was disappointed, but to be potentially disconnected at this time (there is often no internet, no electricity and no hot water) would have been way tough. Then I thought, how much it means to her, and how it gives me a chance to support her startup, and I changed my mind, this was a chance for me to put aside my startup for 1 week, for hers.  1 week out of 51 where my startup takes so much of our time is a small investment to make to show her I cared.
    After Waslala, its going to be more travel, and then more travel for my work. Who knows what the future holds, because Nora dialed back teaching last year so we could spend time together this year, but now she knows that she misses being a professor, so that’s going to eat into her flexibility with my travel schedule.  That’ll be the next challenge, but I think we’re up to figuring out that delicate balance.  For now I gotta pack my backpack, some of the crappiest clothes I own, malaria meds, every charger I can get may hands on, water bottles, anti mosquito spray, well you get it…we ain’t staying at “The W” lets put it that way.
    image
    Waslala here we come!!!!