Today is a special day for me: the 5-year anniversary of the podcast.
No one is luckier than me. It has been such an honor to learn from more than 300 guests and reach 30 million people.
It is also fun to reflect on what the guests and the process itself have taught me...
1. Growth without goals
Habits trump goals
At the start, I had no idea where this podcast would take me. Its led to 5 companies, investments, new products, and many of my closest friends
I didn't predict (or control) those outcomes. I did control the weekly habit.
I don't know what the next 5 years will hold, but I'm confident if I keep meeting and learning from these exceptional people, great things will happen.
For me, this philosophy has become a faith.
“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”
2. Embrace incompetence
The directive to "stay in one's circle of competence" strikes me as nuts.
I didn't know almost anything about areas like tech or software where I now spend much of my time
Better to be the least informed person in any given room and push ones boundaries
3. Responsibility
The best guests shared a trait: they viewed EVERYTHING in their lives and careers as their responsibility. No whining, no complaining.
This might be the most impactful lesson on me. When I stop blaming, everything came into focus.
4. People
As my partner @BrentBeshore, you need three things: talent, opportunity, and capital
All three spring from real, deep relationships with great people. I've spent almost all my time getting to know people over these 5 years, and its by far the best investment I've made
Have been lucky to meet with or study hundreds of companies in 2021.
Here's an ongoing list of company attributes that I find interesting...
1. Operations Focus
“Amateurs talk strategy, professionals talk logistics.” A grand vision is great, but the best companies are often focused on challenging but tangible near term goals. If a founder can’t move from vision to on the ground details quickly...bad sign
2. Life’s work
To borrow a concept from @nikiscevak, it is thrilling to find someone doing their “life’s work.” When someone's personal path lines and formative experiences line up with the problem a company is solving, I get excited. "Life's work" is a source of perseverance
“Positioning” is one of the most important books I’ve read.
“The basic idea is not to create something new and different, but to manipulate what’s already in the mind, to retie the connections that already exist.”
E.g. this is how we came up with the term “Custom Indexing”
As we tried to name the category for our Canvas platform (since it was first of its kind), we literally spent a year trying category names until Custom Indexing landed.
Here’s my message to the team back in 2019. Funny that I was wrong and we used “indexing”
One other thought after reviewing my old slack messages this morning: it is very, very fun to create a platform vs an app.
We’ve seen Canvas used for so many creative applications in past year that we could never have imagined or predicted.
36 today...weird age! One of the only ages where you feel simultaneously very old and very young.
I’m insanely fortunate to do what I love with people I admire. Seems a good opportunity to share some things that have helped me along the way...
Early in your career, work on “full stack” projects. A full stack project is one which 1) is your idea 2) is your sole responsibility and 3) requires sales (meaning you have to convince someone of something -internal or external-to complete the project). After, all else pales.
Schedule creative output. Pick some work product that you can do well (piece of content, small software tool, unique zoom meetings, whatever) and force yourself to produce one every [week, month, quarter].