Four sayings that changed how we operate

“The aesthetic of competence”

For more than two years, we’ve sent an update to investors at ~8am of the first of each month. We now send two updates, one for each our two companies, like clockwork. 

Each update contains our key metrics, our biggest challenges, and what we’re doing about it. One investor, after receiving more than 30 of these, called out our ‘aesthetic of competence’, which has become a defining phrase for us.

Sending these makes us look like we’re doing a good job. And we are. But importantly these updates (and other visible acts of consistency) do a few things:

• They create trust. We’ve demonstrated that we show up and do what we say.

• Excellence is an aesthetic: consistently showing up forces everyone else on the team to do the same.

• The act itself is the work of becoming competent. It’s a forcing function to crystalize our thoughts and step back to see the month over month progress.

“Happiness is a quarter away”

My co-founder Dan once jokingly said this and it’s come to represent our momentary illusion that once we hit some milestone or achieve some goals we will reach the promised the land.

But you never do, because there’s always another hill to climb. The role of CEO is one where you can’t truly ever be happy. Content maybe. 

But happy, well: my grandmother used to say there are two kinds of jobs. The boring ones, and then the other kind. So figure out how to get joy in the daily process. 

“Punch through moment”

This is a moment where everything looks like it’s fucked: a key process just broke or a key employee just quit. It’s the moment you feel like quitting. 

And time and time again, leaning into these moments has made everything better. It’s forced us to uplevel and really think about what the core problem to solve is instead of the status quo.

This phrase also captures something important: these moments are expected. They are the journey. We’ve gotten through them before and will do so again. And they are often gifts in retrospect.

“Everyone hires A players”

Right? ;) 

This one is tongue in cheek. It’s such easy, useless advice to give: “only hire A players”. Here are actual decisions you’re going to need to make:

• You have 3 leadership roles to fill but can only budget for 2 people at the seniority you were hoping. What do you with the third?

• You have someone ‘good enough’ in a role that is problem #7. Do you spend time to uplevel the role, or let it simmer while you solve problems #1-3?

• You’ve had a role open for six months, which has sucked bandwidth from everyone else on the team. How long do you keep looking vs making a call?

And what makes you think your dinky startup or team can hire A players, anyway? Trust me: even the most externally perceived elite firms I’ve worked at have had only a very, very small number of A players.

Here’s how we approach the problem:

• Understand what greatness looks like in every role, even if you can’t hire it today. Keep the benchmark high and grow people. 

• Even if there are some B’s, never let the B players hire the C players.

• The team matters over the individual: create a team of complimentary strengths.

• And of course, when you find an A player: go all in.

And as Dan recently said, “I think someone would broadly define me and you as A players but we have so much wrong with us.” Truth.