<Read only if you are a founder/operator. Coz IYKYK.>
Reading old emails in prep for a call got me thinking: I want to quantify all the introductions I’ve made and received over the past 15 years building Third Team Media and DashoContent. How many has it been? 100s? 1000s? I’m tracking it this quarter till next year: simple tally, time-to-first-outcome, and whether warm intros actually convert faster. If they do, we double down.
Because heck, it’s been quite a long journey…
Met people, served them, provided value, moved on, befriended them, forgotten by them, remembered by them, served again and again.
One hiccup along the way is nothing. Two is a pinch. Three is a regular day. I’ve seen it all, and yet I’m still here trying to be the “nice” person I can be. But in entrepreneurship, “nice” will get you nowhere… I mean, you can see that. And you may have experienced that as well.
Aside from nice: emotional? Am I emotional? Hell yeah. I run my business with heart. Am I quantified in my decisions? Of course, that too. I ain’t here standing without the data analysis. So I don’t get why people confuse my passion with mere emotions. I stop when the numbers tell me to.
Feel it fast, test it fast. Then log the decision and move.
But all in the service of what? For the legacy? Probably. For the money? Close enough, coz it funds it all. For the mission? Hell yeah. The people and brands that DO GOOD deserve to be heard and have their stories told in ways that only technology can.
So yeah, I’m not in favor of people who see valor in the “unkind truth” when you can choose to be kind. Even if you are in entrepreneurship, mentoring, or business, you can be both kind and ambitious. That in itself means living multiple lives.
And listening to that one Billions episode today, when Taylor asked “what’s the point,” all the ghosts of Fleire’s past nodded with me when Bobby Axelrod said, “You get one life, so do it all.”
Do it all indeed. But do it with receipts.
