Love Letter #11
Hi Team,
The year is getting closer to its end. It has definitely been a hard year, but also a year full of important steps, and important lessons. Lessons can come from everywhere, but it is often they come from pain. There are organisms that learn and evolve, and others that don’t. I think we are in a better place than 8 months ago. Although our financials are still not where we want them to be, they are trending in the right direction. Some people have left, but other valuable people have joined. This is supposed to be the way organizations are run. Here are some of the things I’ve started to get a better understanding on (I don’t think you ever finish learning something):
Leadership is caring about the small details, making hard choices, unpopular decisions, and having difficult conversations.
Man, if I had quite a bit of these this year. The company had to let go (through my hand) many good co-workers and friends. But these allow certain areas of the organization to heal, other people to grow, and many to find new opportunities. I think we can all have more difficult conversations, tough conversations: sometimes this is scary, they hurt, but they are the ones that make our brain change. Think about it: why would your patterns change unless they encounter strong resistance? And change is such a necessary and vital thing. Staying as we are is not only boring, but it is a recipe for failure.
Strategy is hard because it is picking the one thing that will propel you forward.
This year we took a huge bet and for 4 months, half the development team went into our payment processing effort. The product suffered, and the company suffered (4 months with very few features and very few bugs fixed). But it was necessary. We have enabled a new growth engine that will start giving fruits soon.
Reading the book “The Crux” I learned that strategy didn’t have to be this pie in the sky thing, or finding the “mythical blue ocean”, but just thinking about what you see in front of you, and identifying the action that will be more impactful, that will compound, and change the way you currently work.
Your next action should free resources -money or time-, or should make you specially different, so different and better, that people will be willing to pay extra just for it. After that, it is just commitment.
Leadership is about generating the positive tension that a business needs
Remember the last time you met someone who moved you? That person said something, or perhaps it was the way they walked, or simply existed, that created something in the environment. In a business, you should strive to generate positive tension, a rush, a deadline, an objective and the eagerness of doing or achieving something.
Sometimes we are the receivers of tension, and sometimes we are the emitters of the tension. There is positive tension and negative tension, and it is important that you learn the difference. A person that gossips generates toxic tension, a person that is pushing us to achieve something on time is generating a tension that the business might need. It is the beat of a drum, the call to arms. It does not matter where you are in the organization, you can produce this tension. A person that joined fresh out of college, who had to do something and then go tell her/his boss: “I’m done, what’s next”, is a generator of positive tension. The team-member that says we said we were going to deliver this month, and fuck if we don’t! - that person is driving everyone forward. The colleague that provides feedback to your work if creating constructive tension. You may not like it, but when you are feeling angry, think about it: is this person pulling me up so I can raise? And what happens if that person stays silent? Is that person doing you a favor? Good leadership is about placing that tension in place, all the time. Good leadership is saying, I know you are tired, but we need to keep moving.
Success leads to Plenty, which Leads to Laxity (quote by Richard Rumlet)
This is true in business and life. During our strategy discussions, we outlined a series of risks and opportunities that we wanted to tackle. The total bill was for about $1.3 M in investments. Aguirre then asks: Do we have any timeline on these things? But here is the catch, we are getting the investment, but we have to be careful.
We are at $2.5 M in ARR through bootstrapping, meaning being careful, taking care of pennies. We have all heard of the lottery course -people who win the lottery that end up poorer with no families nor friends-. Well, investments can be like a lottery course, if you are not careful it can ruin your life or your company. But if you do it right, if you spend wisely and carefully, it can take you to the moon. We want to go to space, we want to spend carefully and slowly. If after all this investment, we break even in 2025, that would be a super achievement.
Risks are Opportunities.
There are a thousand different risks you encounter everyday. But looking at it from the correct perspective, and facing them forward can place you in a winning position. With Roberto we are working on a list of risks per department that will allow us to create next steps in terms of investments that will allow us to get faster, stronger, and better.
With growth, things get harder, not easier, but with luck and the right brain wiring, you get stronger, not weaker
Confession: this has been my tougher year with the company. Hard conversations have taken place. The company muscles were flexed. I had to push you harder than I had in the past, and some of you, I believe, like muscles, broke, but grew stronger and bigger. The hard part is not over, not yet. But things are looking in the right direction.
Keeping a growth mindset is the difference between an upper trend line and a downer trend line.
This year was challenging in many regards, we missed expectations in two quarters, and that makes you react in a protective way. You want to “secure” things. You want to play defense. But defense won’t give you the growth you need.
The same way that only looking at problems won’t give you the life you want. You need creativity, and thinking conservatively won’t get you there. I’m not saying not to look at your problems, but there are opportunities out there that will dissolve your problems away. We need the strength to look for those. Someone said it is easy to have faith when things are going well. It is when things are hard, that faith gets tested.
Environment matters. Curate, Curate, Curate.
Look at the new office. Can we not do better work there? Breath, take a walk, receive the sun? I’m sorry it took so long to realize this. I also apologize for the internet, but we are getting there. The same works for your home, your day. Is your desk clean? Are the people you are frequenting making you better? Do you have the right books by you? Do you have the right apps on your phone, or are they poisoning you and wasting your time? Curate, curate, curate.
The fact that you won’t make everyone happy is not a problem, it is a situation.
While I was in Cali, we had a conversation with the development team in which it was funny to observe that a problem for one, was a benefit for another. The office is too far. We have to do our own testing. I have to shadow people. Since satisfying everyone is impossible, I try to do what’s best for the company.
Our brains are wired so differently, it is a miracle we can communicate.
You may think this is so obvious, but as you grow older, and get more tolerant to people’s ways, this fact never ceases to amaze you: in fact, its mystery gets deeper and more beautiful. When we talk about the things that shaped us, we tend to think of the good things, that thing we overcame, that lesson from a parent or a relative, but not as much as the things that hit us like a bus on the street.
That thing that happened that made you afraid, or distrustful, or that hurt like a motherf**er. That also shaped you. And it is important to dig deep and understand these type of things. With my therapist I was discussing my explosions of frustration. I was telling him that I never get to the point of insulting anyone, and here he interjected… but like a wild wolf, you always show your teeth… Why is that? he asked. I’m still pondering the answer. You can ask me that next time my volume goes up.
Taking care of yourself, a good walk, and a disconnected day are wonderfully healing practices.
Are you overwhelmed? Grab a friend, go outside, take a walk. Want to discuss something? Go outside, take a walk. This time investment does wonders for your brain, and it will probably give you better ideas.