I met with an entrepreneur who is building a platform to help artists master and engineer their tracks. Automation will reduce their production time and costs so they can release more music. The platform leverages data science to make the automation possible.

I was intrigued as he explained the problem facing artists and how his platform will address it. I enjoy music as a consumer but have zero experience in the creative or business side of the industry. I have a high-level understanding of data science but zero experience applying it. I would have never thought to put the two together to solve a problem.

This entrepreneur has experience in both areas, which is rare. He’s been a musician since childhood. He’s passionate about it and has over a decade of learning under his belt. He’s worked in data science roles at start-ups alongside PhDs in data science. That experience taught him the power and capabilities of data science. His passion and experience allowed him to recognize how seemingly unrelated disciplines could be combined to create something wonderful.

This entrepreneur is in a great position. His experience puts him ahead of anyone else who has a similar idea; he’ll be able to move much faster. His passion will motivate him and push the platform to the finish line. The two together give him an unfair advantage that greatly increases his chances of success.

If you’re thinking about entrepreneurship, consider: What are you passionate about? What do you have experience doing? Can you put the two together? Identifying your unfair advantage could put you on a path to great success!

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!

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.

Today marked the end of my fifteenth week of working from home. Here are my takeaways from week fifteen:

• Awareness – Knowing my weaknesses and asking people who are strong in those areas for help was beneficial this week. One person pointed out one of my blind spots, which allowed me to make a better decision quickly.
• New things – I learned a lot of new things this week. Personal and professional things. I’m excited about using what I learned. I like learning, and this week reminded me of that.
• Catching up – I talked to a few people I hadn’t spoken with in some time. It always feels good to catch up with folks. Every time, I’m surprised by how much I get from these conversations.  

Week fifteen was a good week. It hit me that it’s been almost four months. That’s a third of the year. I’m starting to wonder if where we are now is the new norm.

I’ll continue to learn from this unique situation, adjust as necessary, and share my experience.

Last year I attended a conference in Atlanta. One panelist was a black venture capitalist. I hadn’t heard of him and was intrigued. He has experience at various venture firms and recently launched a $40 million fund to start his own. His firm is a hybrid that invests in emerging venture capital firms and early-stage companies. This hybrid approach was new to me. I set a goal of connecting with him and learning from his experiences. Unfortunately, he lives on the West Coast (like most VCs), so it hasn’t happened.

I try to read everything that’s published about him. One piece mentioned that he would be giving a talk to alumni of his alma mater via Zoom. I didn’t attend his school but figured I’d try to register anyway. Worst case, they reject my registration. Best case, they don’t, and I get to learn something. To my surprise, they let me in.

The talk was great—well worth the time. He shared his unique perspective on various things and discussed the challenge of raising capital for his firm. The highlight, though, was an unpublished resource he shares with firms he invests in. He offered to share it with his audience upon request. Naturally, I asked for a copy. Had I not attended, I would never have known this golden nugget of information was available.

I haven’t been able to connect with him in person, but I didn’t let that discourage me. I did the next best thing. I went to where he would be sharing his experiences and listened. Today, it happened to be on Zoom. It wasn’t what I envisioned when I set my goal, but it did the trick. It filled some of my knowledge gap, and I now have a great resource that will continue to do so.

Sometimes it isn’t obvious how you can accomplish a goal. But if you’re clear on what your goal is, persistent, and open to creative solutions, the universe usually presents you with an opportunity. You just need to recognize it and take advantage of it.