I’ve been asked a few times to name one game-changing thing I did to help myself. Easy question: I sought out people MUCH smarter than I who were directionally aligned with me. This changed my trajectory, and it’s something most people can do.

Directional alignment was key, and it required me to think about where I want to be in 10, 15, and 20 years. I didn’t get granular and say I want to be at X place by Y date; I kept it high-level. When I was thinking of leaving corporate America, I decided I wanted to build a company and be an entrepreneur. I didn’t want to be shady or exploitative. I wanted to be successful while treating others the way I wanted to be treated. Super high-level; clear direction.

Once I knew where I was headed, I looked for groups of people smarter than I was. Some, like EO, were formal. Others were informal. I’ll admit this was tough to do. I was very uncomfortable when I first interacted with these groups. I was used to being at the top of my game. I’d done well in school and ranked high among my peers in the corporate world. I soon learned how big my knowledge gap was!

I was inexperienced and embarrassed when I couldn’t answer questions about topics that were basic in these circles. I often had no idea what they were talking about and experienced imposter syndrome. I powered through it, though. I noted things I was unfamiliar with and Googled them later. I had one-off conversations with people to dive deeper into specific topics. I eventually realized that when I was uncomfortable, it meant I was learning. Over time I became comfortable being uncomfortable.

Smart people introduced me to many new things and better ways of doing old things. Over time, I formed great relationships with many of them. Looking back, I see how critical my decision was. These groups helped fill my knowledge and relationship gaps, which gave me more opportunities to be successful.

I once listened to a founding executive of a publicly traded Atlanta company speak. Bob helped scale the company from a five-man team to an IPO with thousands of employees. He was sharp and reminded me of a startup founder. He always believed the impossible was possible. When asked what the secret to his company’s success was, Bob said his team didn’t blindly trust anybody or anything. Their motto: “prove it.”

As it scaled to an enterprise-size organization, his company was pitched tons of products and services. Often, when he asked why ABC product or XYZ service was the best, the answer was, “All the big companies are using it.” This never made any sense to him. His team learned to give that rationale zero weight. They tested everything to find out for themselves if it was the best. Often, they found that big companies were not using the best—far from it. They’d find competitors with superior offerings. And knowing the shortcomings of other companies gave them insights on how to differentiate themselves to customers.

This approach ultimately produced their competitive edge. Bob and his team did the tedious grunt work of vetting everything that underpinned their technology. Their competitors had chosen the lazy way, piggybacking on big companies’ decisions. Over time, using the best of the best made Bob’s company’s platform lightning fast. Once customers discovered how fast it was, the company developed a cult following.

My big takeaway from his story was to trust but verify. You can’t lean on someone else all the time. You have to dig in and put in the time yourself.

I spent over a decade building CCAW. The journey was pretty crazy—filled with extreme highs and lows. I didn’t realize the value in taking time away. I worked five years straight before taking a one-week vacation and around eight or nine years before taking a two-week one. It took people close to me encouraging me to take time off and feeling mentally and physically exhausted.

On vacation, I didn’t look at work unless it was an absolute emergency. I made sure to communicate this to the team to set expectations.

I hadn’t realized how wound up I was. Time away brought this into focus. I worked out regularly, so I had a physical release, but this was mental. It took me longer than it should have to relax and enjoy my downtime. Working on something intensely for so long had slowly changed my mental state and I hadn’t realized it. Time away let me reset mentally and relax.

It’s common knowledge in my entrepreneurial circles that sleep is a challenge. A fair number of us don’t sleep soundly because our minds are racing. Waking in the middle of the night becomes the norm. We learn to function on suboptimal sleep. I slept much better on vacation, recharging mentally and physically.

I come up with many of my best ideas and solutions to nagging problems when I’m away from the business (like some people say they do in the shower!). I’ll be thinking about something else and an idea will pop into my head. I jot it down so I won’t keep thinking about it. Over the years I’ve noticed that when I get things out of my head, my subconscious mind uses the bandwidth in creative ways.

My experiences with time away are probably extreme, but I share them so others can learn from them. You may think there’s no good time to be away from your business, but sometimes that’s exactly what you and the business need.

I hope everyone enjoyed their downtime this holiday weekend!

Happy July 4th!

I hope everyone had a safe and healthy holiday!

When I’m passionate about an idea, my mind races. I think of ways to maximize the potential I see. I visualize the idea as a success. I’m mentally at the finish line before I’ve even started running the race. I see how it can add value to customers’ lives, how it will run, how many people are needed, what those people will do, and on and on. Then I have to tell myself, whoa. It takes time to get to the finish line. The idea will get there, but not on day one. When it does, it might not look exactly like my vision.

When an idea has great potential, I want it to be realized immediately. Unfortunately, things don’t work that way. After a decade-plus as an entrepreneur, I still have to remind myself of that. It takes time to learn what your customers want, develop what they’ll actually pay for, build a team, and work through the unexpected kinks.

Most worthwhile businesses didn’t start off anywhere close to where they ended up. Netflix began by shipping DVDs. Now it has a huge digital content library and creates original movies and shows—all delivered digitally over the internet. Amazon started off selling and shipping books. Now it creates movies and TV shows, owns a grocery store, and sells computing power to companies of all sizes. Oh . . . and it’ll sell you anything you can think of and deliver it in two days. Facebook got its start connecting college students over the internet. No one had any idea how or when it would make money. Now it generates $70 billion in annual advertising revenue, runs a social network that connects the world, helps people share images via Instagram, and offers free cross-border mobile communication via WhatsApp. These are extreme examples, but you get my point.

Greatness doesn’t materialize on day one. It develops over time and the journey is a valuable part of the process. Things that weren’t obvious at the outset are discovered along the way and help inform where you end up.

The next time you’re excited about a great idea with lots of potential, savor the feeling and look forward to the ride!

Today I had a conversation about change. Sarah is experiencing significant change, like everyone, as a result of COVID-19. She’s feeling a lot of angst. She wanted to know how I’m dealing with virus-related changes and what I’ve learned from navigating change over a decade as an entrepreneur.

The first thing I noticed is that Sarah rejects change. She fights it if she didn’t initiate it. She will change eventually, but only after the pain of not doing so is unbearable. But change can be caused by something out of our control (like a pandemic). Fighting against something you can’t control wastes time and energy. The world doesn’t care what we think. We can either accept change and get on with things or struggle against it and endure anxiety, or worse. Regardless, the change keeps happening.

I also noticed that Sarah sees most change as an obstacle. That’s her perspective, for whatever reason, and it affects how she copes. It would help her to realize that while change is inconvenient, it opens up new possibilities. Thinking about them instead of dwelling on present discomfort can illuminate opportunity.

I view change as inevitable. The world is constantly evolving. That has always been true and it may be the only thing that will never change. With that perspective, I try to embrace most change. Doing so has allowed me to take advantage of some great opportunities and spared me avoidable stress.

The next time you experience change (now, maybe?), consider accepting it and focusing on the opportunities it presents.

One thing I didn’t do well early in my career was recognize greatness quickly. Someone close to me had to point it out (much later, typically). People . . . opportunities . . . accomplishments—it didn’t matter. For whatever reason, I wouldn’t see it as soon as other people did. And when I did, sometimes it was too late.

During my journey building CCAW, I realized that I didn’t recognize greatness quickly. I didn’t like this about myself and decided to change it. My knowledge gap was my first issue. I tackled it by reading widely in areas I deemed important personally and professionally. This gave me a baseline. When something was superior to that baseline, I could readily identify its greatness. My personality was another obstacle. I tend to be laid back and have blind spots when it comes to people. I can’t change how I’m wired, so this was more challenging to solve. I learned to ask the opinions of colleagues or friends who deeply understand people when I encountered someone I wasn’t sure about. Their observations helped me recognize when the person was great. Not the most scientific approach, but it works for me.

Not being able to recognize greatness hindered me in a few ways. It slowed my decision making, so I missed out on some great opportunities. And I didn’t allocate the appropriate time and resources to great people and opportunities.

Times change. Today I had a conversation with a buddy about an investment I made that has done well. He asked how I knew the company would succeed before other people did. I told him that I quickly recognized its uniqueness because I’ve seen lots of companies in the space and done lots of reading about the space. This company’s performance was rare when I baselined it against what I usually see. I believed this company was great and invested in it confidently.

Some opportunities really do come along only once in a lifetime. Learning to know them when you seem them can be life changing!

Today a friend reached out and offered a suggestion. He’s watched me share more over the last few months and had an idea. He sent me a text about it and we hopped on the phone. The suggestion was a small tweak that would expose my content to more people. I had no idea it was possible. I thanked him and asked if he had seen anything else I could do better, and he made more suggestions. All of them were great.

I reflected after the call. In ten minutes, he told me things that would have taken me weeks to figure out. What a huge amount of time saved! I just had to open my mind and be receptive to someone pointing out an area I could improve in.

Early in my entrepreneurial journey I was overconfident. People would make suggestions, but I wouldn’t heed them. If I had a vision for something and a suggestion didn’t mesh with it, I wouldn’t take it seriously. Instead of listening to what the person was saying, I would fixate on their not buying into my vision. Often, I learned the hard way. Eventually I’d do what they had suggested, but only after my vision had failed. Over time, I learned to appreciate credible people and listen when they make suggestions.

My friend is a very credible entrepreneur and respected in his field, so I was receptive when he reached out. In fact, I was excited to be critiqued by him and hear his perspective. Sure, he pointed out things I wasn’t doing well. But more importantly he showed me a better way and explained why it was a better way. I thanked him for taking the time to contact me and implemented the change while we were on the phone. I wanted him to know that I took his suggestions seriously.

The next time someone credible offers to critique your work, jump at the chance and listen to them. If such offers aren’t coming your way, consider asking someone credible to critique your work. You could save yourself a lot of time and energy and learn things you might not have otherwise!

I chat with rising entrepreneurs regularly. Some have nothing but an idea. Some have built an MVP and are fine-tuning it based on customer feedback. Almost none of them have validated that customers are willing to open their wallets and pay for their product or service. Translation: they don’t have product–market fit.

These founders usually ask me about raising money from investors. A few hundred thousand is what I usually hear. To be clear, there’s nothing wrong with raising money. Progress requires capital. Building an MVP and modifying it based on customer feedback takes time and energy, which requires people. People don’t work for free. Customer revenue this early in a company’s life cycle is minimal. This means founders need capital from other sources, such as investors.

I usually ask these rising entrepreneurs a few things:

• Do you have a working product or service?
• How many paying customers do you have?
• How do you plan on spending investors’ money?

These questions usually spark a good conversation. My objective is to get them to focus on their goal and see if raising money aligns with that goal.

Raising investor capital is important, but early-stage founders should focus on developing a product or service that customers are willing to pay for. Investor capital should be viewed as a tool to help them reach their goal, not the goal.

I recently connected virtually with an investor based in San Francisco. He said the area has an extensive network of investors with early-stage experience who are willing to invest when a company is two people and an MVP. There’s a deep bench of subject-matter experts who have firsthand experience with a company going from an idea to a material liquidity event (I define that as $250+ million). And because there’s a lot of capital available for entrepreneurs, investors compete.

He’s visited Atlanta a few times, attending events like Venture Atlanta and trying to get to know more about the city’s startup ecosystem. His first observation was that his assumptions were completely wrong. He assumed the Atlanta community of investors would be more diverse than San Francisco’s, but he found them to be similar. He thought the ecosystem would be united, with everyone working together. Instead he found the city to be somewhat fragmented by geography. Overall, he likes Atlanta and thinks there’s lots of opportunity here. Unfortunately, he found it difficult to locate great Atlanta companies to invest in without physically being in the city.

I think most of his observations are accurate. The city can be challenging to navigate if you don’t live here. However, I believe Atlanta’s entrepreneurial ecosystem is on the cusp of something big. Just a few things are needed for it to be top-tier.

Every city has unique qualities that make up its identity. Copying a successful city won’t yield the same results. That said, I believe there is a pattern to success. Certain foundational elements are common to cities with strong entrepreneurial ecosystems, and they should be implemented by cities that want to replicate that success. Here are some of them:

• Abundant knowledge about the entrepreneurial journey that’s readily available to everyone regardless of their background
• A desire to establish bidirectional relationships with people, even if it means going outside one’s comfort zone
• Available capital and mentoring for talented and capable entrepreneurs of all backgrounds

I’m hopeful that Atlanta (and other cities) will add these foundational items. Doing so could change the trajectory for the city and all the people who call it home!