Wil Reynolds

Category: Resilience

  • I don’t have imposter syndrome. Whew, I finally said it.

    I don’t have imposter syndrome. Whew, I finally said it.

    “If you don’t have imposter syndrome, you are probably a man”

    I’ll never forget I was in San Diego at the Searchlove conference. One of the speakers opened her presentation asking about imposter syndrome, she asked people to raise their hands if they’ve ever had it.

    Almost everyone’s hands went up. Mine did not, it was easier to join the crowd but I keep it real, it wasn’t MY truth. The next thing she said, made me reflect and has sat in my psyche for the last 8+ years. She said…look around at how many people’s hands are up everyone has imposter syndrome, except for a few.

    Within 5 minutes of her getting into her presentation she reflected on her opening, and said…remember earlier when I asked about imposter syndrome and everyone’s hands went up, I bet the only people who didn’t were men.

    Ouch. Great opportunity to self reflect on why not me, is it because I’m a man, is it because I’m cocky or overconfident?

    I’ve done a LOT of thinking on this topic since that was said and here are the reasons why I do not have imposter syndrome. I’ve been sitting on these thoughts for years (my poor wife has had to hear me working this out, checking myself, my biases, etc, for years)..I’ve been keeping this to myself cause I just didn’t feel like putting this out there, until last week…

    Last week at an event called the HOPE summit with hopeworks, The panel got asked by a young lady in the crowd, how we deal with it and overcome it, it was the first time I publicly let out what I’ve known my whole life…I don’t have imposter syndrome.

    I keep it 100 with young people, so I couldn’t hold this 5 year thought in any longer…

    My Mom: They may have more money, bigger houses, etc but they are not better than you.

    Many great things in my life come back to my mom, and I’m going to do my dang best to raise my kids with the confidence my mom instilled in me.

    My mom recognized that she was raising a black boy, and “the talk” in our house wasn’t just about police, it was about “you aren’t going to get a fair shot” so be better. Tough.

    It was drilled into my head from the jump…that because I’m black if I got a 3.5 GPA and a white kid got a 3.5, I wasn’t winning the job or the admission to college. If my resume was the same as my white counterparts, then I wasn’t going to get the job. I had to have confidence and the numbers to back it up.

    I was told…

    If you ever end up with average opportunities, you had to be above average to get there.

    If you end up with above average opportunities you were going to have to be GREAT, and if you end up great you were likely exceptional.

    The Private School Chat

    I went to a catholic school, and while my first through 8th grade was mostly raised around kids like me with similar socio economic backgrounds, high school pulled from a lot more towns, and it was in that moment that I realized oh there’s new levels to this.

    My mom would always remind me, these people have nicer houses, drive nicer cars, etc but they are NOT and will NEVER be better than you. You can’t be like them you have to be better than them.

    Fun question to ask yourself: What is something that if you saw a family with you assumed they were rich? (mine: if they had a house with 2 doors on the front, they were loaded :))

    Scoreboards are imposter syndrome repellant for me

    When you don’t have a scoreboard, being “liked" is your currency. When you have a scoreboard “impact on goals” is your currency.

    I was recently asked, how I deal with imposter syndrome, and I told the young lady who asked. I never had it. Then I went on to explain, this country seems to care a LOT more about green than it does black or white.

    I always gravitated towards sports, “scoreboard bitch”.

    I KNEW if I wasn’t good enough to start, I KNEW if I was.

    I KNEW my batting average, and in the years where it was high, I made all star teams, I started all star teams, regional teams, etc. The years where it sucked, I was benched, I didn’t make those teams and win those awards. I didn’t get benched because I wasn’t liked.

    I got benched because someone else’s contribution to the goal was higher than mine. That’s life.

    The amount of practice I’d have to do to try to get close wasn’t worth it, but I knew I could practice more of I wanted it bad enough.

    There was mom, every time I would say “the coach doesn’t like me” (no agency, out of my control) to say, “maybe you just arent good enough, you should practice more.” (agency, within my control).

    What a mini scoreboard looks like

    I remember I used to track hashtag usage at conferences, and if it was single track I would overlay hashtag usage by hour and then overlay the speaker schedule against hashtag usage. People would say “you crushed it” and that felt good and all, but it was that moment back at the hotel that mattered, the graphic that showed hashtag usage during my session.

    You crushed it = Do they like me

    Building a hashtag tracker = What is my value vs other speakers

    Being leveraged vs Being Liked

    Professionally, I don’t want or need you to like me, I want you to give me data that says YOU and I if it is you best interest to want me on your team because the data says I am likely to help you hit YOUR goals.

    Search marketing, especially in the early days was just like a sport.

    If I didn’t get the ranking, I sucked and I can study more, test more and get better.

    That is great because I don’t spend time wondering “if I am liked” I spent my time getting better. There was no AltaVista or Hotbot algorithm that favored white folks. The numbers would tell me how good or great I was not some boss, all I needed was a scoreboard.

    I continue to tell young people, get in a job with metrics.

    Kids are always so surprised when I tell them I didn’t run into much overt racism in my corporate career. Why? I had metrics, data, etc that told me if I was an asset or not (and so did my managers).

    That is why I encourage them to the best I can to go into a job where you can point and say “scoreboard bitch”. Just make sure your scoreboard moves revenue numbers and isn’t some vanity thing you made up to feel good about yourself.

    If you are going to question your value, be around all stars.

    We confuse launching websites, with analyzing the impact of that launch impact. We confuse speaking at conferences with being an asset to the conference attendees. We look for easy metrics to justify our worth, without the scrutiny on those metrics they deserve.

    If you bat .300 in AA ball, YOU KNOW that isn’t winning. The goal is the pros. But in marketing if your email campaign gets a 10% higher CTR, you have no idea if that is winning in A ball or not, because you avoid being in places with all stars who might humble the same metrics that make you feel good and feed your ego.

    Hang with all stars. Even if it exacerbates importer syndrome, its better than participation trophies that just lead to you questioning your value anyway.

    Being the best in AA ball is never confused with being the best in the Pros.

    I believe we should seek out being around people who have the potential to make our gains and wins smaller than we think, we need to be reminded of the levels, it is humbling.

    Even when I sold sneakers at 16, I waited for the sales report to see how I did against the older sales people. When I worked at Amazon in a warehouse I tracked my speed to pick a full cart vs the average. I avoided the sameness conversation with others whom I saw as average, they all sounded the same, they complained about their pay, they hated the job, it is hot in the warehouse, etc etc.

    I chose to spend my time with people who don’t complain. This impacts me even to this day. Too many of us choose small circles so we can avoid imposter syndrome, I think you should get in big circles and be humbled but also I spired to go harder.

    Reward systems: Get married vs stay married

    Where are you confusing an output (writing content) with an outcome (growing a business)?

    Or as my brother and law in used to say:

    Why do we spend all the money on getting married, when the real win is staying married, shouldn’t we have bigger parties every year you STAY married? Facts bro, facts.

    Video of me talking about outputs vs outcomes

    At this point everyone has imposter syndrome

    What's funny is right after I got asked that question.
    I joined a meeting with some very heavy hitters and for a few minutes I felt, home smokes how am I here? But quickly I realized well if they are at this level and I got selected to be here someone thinks I can add value.

    But at this point asking a room of people “who has imposter syndrome” is like asking who like travel, or who here likes breathing…so once everyone has it, does anyone?

    Avoiding “minority certification” helped me avoid Imposter Syndrome

    When I look at my clients there’s some big companies who have entrusted us at a time for their success. Many are very large, and we’re working on meaningful projects with. None ever came through a minority owned initiative.

    What does this have to do with imposter syndrome? Everything.

    I’ve avoided people & programs that explicitly say they want to help black and brown founders, why? So I don’t have to question for a second on whether or not my company is “good enough”.

    This isn't a knock on people who do, I just wanted to prove to myself first and that took me 20 years.

    I got work to do, so no ending to wrap up this 5 year long post that I finally wrote 🙂

  • Can you teach someone to be unafraid?

    TLDR: Can you teach someone to be “unafraid” to act when they recognize that the risks are low?

    Since I was 14 I always took risks, I calculated the risk and wasn’t afraid of the consequences and I did things that others ask “who told you that it was OK to do that?” To which I respond…what was the worst thing that could happen?

    Here are 3 examples of me processing risk and acting w/o seeking permission.

    Age 16 — I once tried to help the sneaker company I worked at selling shoes hit a goal. So I hired a friend to stad outside and wave a sign to get people to stop in. Did I ask my boss if that was OK, nope. I just did it. I was pretty sure if I got fired for trying to help him hit his goals, then it wasn’t the right place for me.

    Result: We crushed goal, I kept my job.

    Age 18 — Freshman year I didn’t have a scholarship. I lived in a dorm with a bunch of other dudes who were on scholarship though. First semester I got a 4.0, I saw kids who partied all first semester get put on academic probation, then they came back in the second semester and kept partying. I got a 3.7. But they had scholarship money and I did not.

    So I wrote down their names and went to the financial aid office, and I said here are names of kids I know were on probation and I saw that they kept partying, so I bet a large # of them lost their scholarship $. What happens to the money? Cause ya’ll should have bet on me. No one told me to connect the dots, I just did and figured what was the worst that could happen?

    Result: I got a full 4 year ride after my freshman year (paid for both senior years)

    Age 22 — I made a list of 6 companies I wanted to work with, put a suit on and started knocking on doors. First company whose door I knocked on, gave me a job in search. The rest is history. But most people have never knocked on a door to try to get a job in their lives, they leave working at companies they really want to work with up to chance. I never understood that.

    Result: Altered the trajectory of my life and the lives of countless others.

    So recently I was exploring these are all important lessons in my career growth. Heck my life. Why don’t more people “Just f’ing do it” as my buddy Alex Hillman would say.

    Alex Hillman w/ JFDI tattoo

    So it was in a chat with a co-worker that I asked her…can you teach someone to not overthink things like this and just be unafraid?

    Then at a dinner with Alex and Dan, I asked the question…can you teach this, or is is just innate in some of us to not be afraid.

    To which Dan Mall said…hold up, let me challenge that…fear is a good thing, it is a good signal to be afraid, to stop and process that fear.

    That helped me reframe the question.

    Dan went on to say, you can teach people to assess risk. Courage once you’ve processed how “risky” something is, can be taught. Dan then said processing risk is like getting better at meditation, it can be practiced.

    So now with that reframe, here’s the question… Can you teach someone to get better at assessing risk, then being unfraid to act when they recognize that the risks are low? Or are certain people just wired naturally / innately to overthink low risks, which can paralyze them from acting. Cause if it is teachable, I would love to learn how to. I see a lot of people in my company and in the world whom I have the highest confidence in, but they don’t always have it in themselves and I’d like to help them break through.

  • Hustle is in my DNA, sorry not sorry

    My dad hustled, so I didn’t have to. It’s in his DNA and thus, likely mine. It’s all I saw my entire life, and I do mean entire.

    This is my dad, on my mom’s 80th birthday in 96 degree weather. Yeah that is not a typo. NINETY SIX!

    Here is the kicker, it wasn’t even OUR lawn he’s tending to. It was our neighbor’s, was that neighbor an elderly person unable to do it themselves and my dad was her savior? Nope. She had 50 bux — so he had time.

    Now, I had made dinner, brought it over with some special champagne, for mom’s 80th, I brought the 2 kids over and he said hello and went back to edging the lawn.

    Hey dad, I can pay you 50 bux to spend time with your grandkids and mom on her 80th, but it’s not just about the 50 bux, it’s about staying busy and productive.

    This is the same father who said to me one day…

    “If I come over your house to work on projects and you and I do it together it is free, if you have me come over to work on it and you are at work, 25 bux/hr.”

    The man can’t sit still, he’s always had 2–3 side gigs. Even when he worked full time, he used the weekends to “play soldier” as he called it in the reserves after a 6 year stint in the air force, he played soldier until he was to old to serve.

    He grew up on welfare in poverty, the military was his only way out of that situation, keep me busy, regimented, focused. You can not tell this man to take a break, even at 76 years old in 96 degree weather.

    He lived around people who “took a break” a lot of them got wrapped up in bad things, drugs / alcohol, now they take a break ALL day drunk or fucked up.

    He was on the front lines of poverty & because of his upbringing I’m one generation removed from that extreme poverty, I got to see it when I visited uncles — 1 of them died of overdose, other one lost his legs while being drunk walking in front of a moving car.

    Don’t work…bad things happen. Work a 9am–5pm job, bad things happen from 5pm–10pm, don’t work on Sunday to “rest” — bad things happen. This is how my dad grew up.

    This is in my DNA — don’t sit still for too long, don’t get lazy — bad things happen, you could end up like your uncles.

    Now that I am a dad…I’m taking my Sunday’s to bring my kids to mom’s house to sing happy birthday, read her some books, and make some halibut. I’ll never work like that, but deep down inside I’m my dad’s son.

    My dad hustled, so I have a choice to hustle or not.

    This is why I don’t knock people who contribute to the culture around hustle, you never know where they come from. If my dad didn’t hustle, then we probably wouldn’t have gotten our first computer — we got it as a hand me down from a neighbor, I can’t help but wonder if he mowed a few lawns for free to get me that Commodore Vic-20, which lead to everything I have today. Thanks for the hustle pops.

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Type 1: The cheerleader / comforter

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

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

    Credit

    Type 2: The listener

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

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

    Credit

    Type 3: The relationship tester

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

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

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

    Credit

    Type 4: The trainer

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

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

    Credit

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

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

    Steve has said things to me like:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    We implemented this for 3 reasons:

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

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

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

    Team,

    It’s what I didn’t accomplish. 🙂

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    We made it through

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

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

    I hustle. I’m unapologetic about it.

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

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

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

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

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

    Age 12:

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

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

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

    At age 13:

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

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

    At age 15:

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

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

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

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

    At age 19:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    It took him 9 years to write this…

    Subj: Thank you wil

    Hey Wil,

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

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

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

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

    So, in all sincerity, thank you Wil.

    (Sorry I know you hate long emails)

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

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

  • My #1 Fear, disappointing myself

    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. 🙂

  • Years of practicing resilience is having a big pay off

    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.

  • Gratitude Hacks @ Work

    If you think your company has culture problems / is a shitty place to be, join the club. Who hasn’t been there.

    Its the 10% of people who attempt solutions to culture issues that are the gold in any org.

    Talking about bad culture is like talking about wanting to lose weight. Rarely does moving your mouth improve the culture, at some point you gotta put int the work. Here’s how I’ve kept an attitude of gratitude at Work.

    Here are a couple of things that help me stay in a position of extreme gratitude and I try to spread it, hope it helps you too.

    Thank you cards for co-workers

    Find someone to write a thank you card to, if you aren’t happy with something culturally, lead by example & expressing gratitude to someone, they might do it to someone too.

    You can impact shit like this, cards are cheap, stamps are cheap, and pens are cheap. Do your part to change the things you don’t like.

    This week I got 2 touching cards where people shared very deeply how Seer has impacted them in deeply personal ways, from benefits, to team support, to career growth, you name it. I even had an alumni hit me up and leave some really kind words as she reflected on her time here and the companies she’s been at afterwards (more on that later).

    A couple of thank you / gratitude hacks I have to help spread good vibes:

    1 — Have a thank you card station, with stamps.

    2 — When you write a thank you card to someone in your company, on the back write a note like “write one to someone else before you open this one”

    3 — I’m lazy, so I think about sending thank you cards to people all the time, funny how hard it is to do, so I have printed labels for all my remote people with their addresses, it saves me 3–4 minutes of logging in and out of tools to get addresses, and saves me time, which I just don’t always have a lot of. It also reminds me to send them, since they are a bit more out of daily sight. I also have a roll of address labels for my San Diego office on my desk. That little hack helps me to get out 2x the amount of thank you cards.

    Volunteer w/ co-workers

    You can choose what you do with your time. Volunteering somewhere is the ultimate gratitude hack. It helps me put myself in someone else’s shoes for a second or two. Usually that time I spend with people who are going through some real stuff, makes small cultural things not nearly as big of a deal.

    I often talk about a time in my career where I was so down about the company I worked with and what I was doing with my time. It was volunteering that helped me get through that time and realize it wasn’t such a bad place to be, I had my health and a roof over my head and a good salary and decent people around me. Was it going to be my forever job no. But when I was volunteering at a hospital with sick kids, it gave me perspective.

    A couple of volunteering hacks:

    1 — Do a volunteer event as a company, most companies will support you doing it, if they don’t do it outside of office time, but grab a few other people to do it with, get a conference room and find something you can do for an hour together here and there.

    2 — We do volunteer days with clients (locally), every so often, it humanizes everyone to everyone else. We’re clients and we’re consultants, but we’re PEOPLE too.

    3 — Someone at Seer has asked the red cross to come, and just today we could walk upstairs and donate blood.

    Show up for people in Good Times and Bad

    You control your time. I have flown in for 1 day for weddings when I can. This one wedding took the cake, see below. (By the way the guy who did this is hiring an exec assistant, so yeah he’s a fun one to work with)

    I’ve been on the sadder side too, like funerals, when you see someone in a receiving line’s face light up when they see you, you can’t really put a value on that.

    People don’t expect me to be there, they know I got a lot going on and a family with time demands, but I hope those times I can make it speaks volumes for what I’m willing to do, and leads by example.

    When one of our alumni and her family participated in a city wide walk to commemorate people who had taken their lives, I found a way to make a little time and walk with her and her family. This was the message she wrote just yesterday on Instagram (its a public URL & post so I assume she is OK with it) these things matter and leave impressions on people, she hasn’t worked here in 5 and a half years, she thought of us yesterday.

    Show up for someone, they’ll never forget you.