One of my new favorite life hacks is listening to motivational speeches set against the backdrop of electronic music while I workout. It feels like an absolute cheat code similar to listening to podcasts or audiobooks on a higher speed (I recently got up to 3.5x on Audible, an achievement I feel irrationally proud of as evidenced by my slipping it into this post where it is totally unnecessary.) Whereas before, I would need to choose between being pumped up/focused or turning on my brain, now I can do both. I can’t wait until the day someone builds a tool where I can “pump up” any audio file, but for now, I am making do with listening to the fantastic, Akira the Don (he’s got clout).

One of the people whose speeches I have been listening to is Jocko Willink. His no-holds-barred style and concept of radical ownership are exactly the tonic one needs when awake far too early and feeling unmotivated.

One of my favorite tracks of his is called Good.

In it, Jocko shares his preferred response for any challenge or unforeseen obstacle.

He simply responds “good”.

He has developed a mindset that looks for the opportunity in every challenge.

Don’t get the equipment you wanted for the mission? Good. Now you can focus on keeping it simple.

Don’t get the funding you wanted for your company? Good. Now you have more ownership.

Didn’t get the job you wanted? Good. Now you have more time to prepare.

I love this mindset. Looking for the good in every challenge or failure. Choosing to focus on the opportunity to learn and grow instead of dwelling on what went wrong.

As much as I love this mindset, it is definitely easier said than done.

This past week I have been trying (and often failing) to say “good” to a challenge in my own life. One of the great things about writing a weekly blog is that forcing your thoughts onto (digital) paper can be the world’s greatest form of therapy. Writing out my thoughts on this challenge has definitely helped me and I hope that it can help you to.

Remote Minus

A few weeks ago I wrote about how excited I was for the opportunity to get my MBA at Wharton. Getting my MBA is something I have always wanted to do and I have always wanted to get it from Wharton. Making a big transition is never easy, but I have been really pleased and optimistic about how Wharton was handling the global pandemic.

Until last week.

Last Thursday, Wharton announced that the fall MBA experience would be 100% online. I was pretty floored by the announcement. All summer long, administrators had excitedly been touting the benefits of their “remote plus” model. They promised that if you felt comfortable, there would be an avenue for you to interact with people in a safe, in-person setting. If you didn’t, there would be access to every class and community resource virtually.

I loved this approach and as recently as a month ago had bragged to others about how well Wharton had been handling everything. These are difficult times and I believe that the best approach is to let people opt-in or out of experiences based on their health, comfort level, and risk tolerance.

I was disappointed two weeks ago when the school announced the falls’ class list and we discovered that only 10% of classes would offer any sort of in-person component. Given the makeup of the first-semester schedule, I would be lucky if I could get into even 1 in-person class. But still, the school had said that they would be offering in-person classes, but they didn’t ever commit to an exact number or scope. It wasn’t ideal, but not wholly surprising either and, while disappointed, it was something I, and many other students, felt like we could live with given the context of the day.

Now, not two full weeks later, we received the news that the entirety of the fall experience would be virtual.

The worst thing isn't even the outcome.

With the current state of the world, I think we all knew that a virtual semester had the potential to be in the cards. What frustrates me is everything that led up to this outcome.

Consistent communication that in-person teaching would be happening from the beginning of summer to as recently as two weeks ago. I know this situation is always in flux, but I struggle to believe that the broad brushstrokes of the environment we find ourselves in have deteriorated that meaningfully in two weeks.

Poor communication of the decision itself. All morning we started hearing rumors popping up in various forums and group chats that Wharton was going to make the move to online classes. The official announcement came in an 8-minute speech by the new dean with the message that “School will be online in the fall. There will be no change in tuition costs. We won’t be taking any questions.”

Didn’t exactly inspire confidence.

Now I know that classes moving online at an ivy league grad school is not exactly the sob story of the year, but a lot of people have made significant personal and financial commitments based on the information provided and it is a tough pill to swallow to have everything change two weeks before school starts. Many of us have been working on the MBA process for as long as a year. We quit jobs, took out significant amounts of debt, and made commitments to move to a new (and in my case much more expensive) city all based on the promise that there would be opportunities to connect in person.

I’ve always expected a rationalization in higher education, but I didn’t think that I would be the guinea pig. At this point, I feel committed to my decision to move to Philly and attend. We have bought our way out of our lease in Columbus and already paid significant deposits for a new apartment in Philadelphia. Our movers are picking up our stuff tonight (6.5 hours late. A story worthy of its own blog post 😑).

I feel committed.

But I don’t feel trapped.

Caitlyn and I knew that online school was a possibility and we agreed that we would move to Philly irrespective of what the modality of fall education looked like. So much of the value of an MBA is tied up in building relationships with others that we decided to trust that there would be a critical mass of other students in town no matter what and that we would all be motivated to connect in safe and responsible ways.

If we wanted to, we could still get out of our commitment. I can cancel my student loans without a penalty up until school starts. We could move to Philly and I could look for a new job or we could cancel our lease and lose our deposits.

It would hurt, but we could do it if we wanted to.

But we don’t. We are choosing to follow through with the experience.

We are saying “good”.

School is online? Good. It will give me more flexibility to pursue building my personal and professional network.

School is online? Good. I won’t be able to rely on any administrators to create events to help me meet other students. I won’t have any choice but to take the initiative myself.

School is online? Good. I can take all the skills I have learned about networking and relationship building and I can bring those to school as a leader in the community. This change provides me with an opportunity to leverage my expertise in a way that I might not have been able to before.

School is online? Good. I can see first hand what the future of the education system looks like. When you strip out the old brick building what is an ivy league school? It’s an expensive way to run an experiment, but I will be sure to find out and report back to you all.

School is online? Good. It will give me additional flexibility to pursue work or internship opportunities.

School is online? Good. I believe that much of my career will be spent working online. What a fantastic opportunity to develop best practices for this modality. If businesses are going to be mostly online in the future than experiencing school through that lense could be helpful. Whatever I do, I know that I want to be a leader and this experience will equip me with good habits and an understanding of the positives and negatives as I equip myself to lead companies that will, in all likelihood, have remote employees.

School is online? Good. It gives us an opportunity to visit family or travel with friends now that we won’t be bound to staying in Philly for the entirety of the semester.

School is online? Good. My ideal goal at grad school is to start my own company. Online school could give me the additional flexibility to do that.

They aren’t lowering tuition? Good. The bar for the value of online education just shot through the roof. The imperative is on Wharton to deliver the best damn virtual educational experience ever. I sincerely hope they succeed. It could serve as an example to other schools and businesses in this brave new world. And if they don’t or can’t, well, that will be indicative in its own right.

The school totally botched communication throughout the entire summer? Good. This experience is already bringing the new class closer together than we would’ve ever been otherwise.

This is a huge disappointment to me and it is not what I was hoping for or expecting? Good. Life’s that way too. I have lived an incredibly privileged and blessed life. Challenges are opportunities to learn and grow and I am sure this will be too.

I am really frustrated with how this all transpired? Good. Frustration is potential energy that I have the opportunity to channel towards positive-sum relationship building and learning.

I am anxious about all the ambiguity in the fall? Good. Another opportunity to continue to grow stronger in my lifelong battle against anxiety and self-doubt.

School isn’t handling this the way they should? Good. This has been a lesson on crisis management and leadership in and of itself.

Students have no leverage with the school? Good. This situation presents an opportunity to hone our skill of negotiating when your counterpart is the one with all of the leverage. Negotiating is easy when you hold all the cards. It is a lot harder when the other person does.

This is a major negative impact COVID is having on me? Good. I have been too insulated from this global pandemic for too long. Facing some hardship as an outcome of it will only broaden my perspective and provide me with additional empathy for those who have been impacted far, far more than me.

It’s disappointing how the school isn’t focused on coming up with creative solutions? Good. Gives us an opportunity to take the lead with a solution-focused mindset. We can be focused on coming up with creative solutions to these problems instead of just throwing our hands up in the air and calling it quits.

Why does an MBA have value?

Is it the education? The credential?

Most will say that it is the network you build. But going to a good grad school doesn’t automatically give you a fantastic network. Not really.

You still have to work for it. But more than that, the network upgrade isn’t intrinsic to the school itself. I believe that it is simply a function of the type of people who are willing and attracted to the idea of foregoing two years of income to invest in themselves and their careers. It attracts people who have a risk tolerance commensurate with that level of commitment and who believe they will achieve the kind of success over the long term to make any short-term sacrifice worthwhile.

I am hoping the current pandemic will be a similarly powerful forcing function.

The students who have the risk tolerance and drive to make the most out of this situation are likely the exact people I am going to want to build relationships with.

Transitions are never fun and they are never easy. It is not the ideal time to be making a life-altering transition. But it isn’t the ideal time to be doing much of anything.

Life goes on.

I am frustrated, disappointed, angry, anxious, sad, and hurt that this experience will be different than what I wanted when I started this process almost a year ago.

My MBA experience will be different than anyone expected. It will be the first year that we are operating in a global pandemic. It will be the first year that students are going to pay for an in-person experience and receive a virtual one. It will be the first year where networking events and recruiting will be held over zoom and not in person.

It isn’t want we wanted.

Good.

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Brushing your teeth is the secret to being successful in life and entrepreneurship. In this post, I am going to tell you why.

Brushing your teeth is not difficult. It is something we all do. But how many people do it the right way? It’s recommended that you brush your teeth twice a day, every day. There is proper form and improper form. I am sure some kinds of toothpaste are better than others, but admittedly, it can be difficult distinguishing which toothpastes are the best given that each and every one is recommended by 9 out of 10 dentists (I hope I never come across the 10th dentist. Must be a terribly negative person).

The key to dental health is consistency. You need to put in consistent effort day in and day out. Brushing your teeth for an hour at a time will not allow you to skip brushing your teeth for the next month.

Now, as much as I appreciate the importance of dental hygiene, this isn’t really a post about brushing your teeth. This is a post about life and business, two areas where we all too often brush for an hour once a month.

The key to success in life is consistent application of effort. This is true for everything from relationships and startups, to exercise and reading. Very rarely will you find yourself in situations where a single herculean effort is all that stands between success and failure. Much more often, slow and steady really does win the race.

When I was working at Carlyle the head of my team had a favorite phrase, “Do your day job.” It means taking care of the fundamentals of your role and making sure that you excel on the little things. Because if you don’t, it tends to be a slippery slope.

I am a big Broncos fan and our newest coach, Vic Fangio, put it well in his introductory press conference. When asked to explain his famous “death by inches” mantra he said:

“If you're running a meeting, whether it be a team meeting, offense or defense meeting, a position coach meeting and a player walks in, say 30 seconds late, 45 seconds late -- that act in it of itself really has no impact on whether you're going to win or lose that week.
"But if you let it slide, the next day there's two or three guys late or it went from 30 seconds to two minutes. It causes an avalanche of problems. That's 'death by inches.'”

The little things matter. Showing up consistently and putting in the effort is what makes the difference between success and failure.

No place is this truer than with startups.

On the startup battlefield, wars are not won in a decisive moment. Startup successes are a culmination of years of executing on the little things and consistently making progress. In tech, that steady progress tends to grow exponentially. This fact is sometimes hard to see among twitter hype threads and Techcrunch headlines, but the saying “an overnight success, 10 years in the making” really does ring true.

Execution is so, so key. A VC I really respect once told me that he would take a team that can execute in a small market over a team that can’t in a big market every single day of the week. Execution really is what sets apart A+ teams from the rest, and in venture you need those A+ teams to get the outcomes that justify the whole model.

You can bet that this hyper-focus on execution is something that VCs pay attention to.

A great example of this is due diligence. Due diligence is a necessary, but slow, and sometimes painful, process for everyone involved. A secret of venture capital that not many may know is that how an entrepreneur conducts themselves during due diligence, is just as big of a signal about whether the startup will be successful as anything else. An entrepreneur that is organized, prompt, respectful, and who has a masterful understanding of the ins and outs of their business during due diligence will likely exhibit that same attention-to-detail and execution mastery when it comes to running their business. Entrepreneurs who are difficult to deal with and get easily frustrated or are dodgy about direct questions about the business are unknowingly flying a pretty big red flag for all investors involved.

So now that we have agreed that consistent effort is the key to success, what is the best way to go about applying that effort?

In the immortal words of Joel Embidd:

“Trust the process”

The best way that you can ensure that you are properly applying just the right amount of force and using the proper technique when brushing your way through life is to build a process and stick to it. Our culture is far too outcome oriented. We operate on a last-in-first-out basis and optimize based on the outcomes we see, even when those outcomes are often nothing more than luck. If you flip a coin 4 times and get tails every time, you would not conclude that a coin will always land on tails. And yet, far too often our personal and professional actions are the equivalent of flipping a coin once, and assuming that every other time we ever flip a coin we will get the same result.

I have had a big focus on process ever since reading the book Chop Wood, Carry Water by Joshua Medcalf. I can honestly say this book has had a bigger impact on my life than any other. The subtitle says it all, “How to fall in love with the process of becoming great.” I highly recommend this book to any looking to lead a more process-oriented life.

My advice for you:

Focus on doing the little things right.

Fall in love with the process of becoming great. If you are able to truly do this, the outcomes will take care of themselves.

Maintain consistent effort instead of bursts of hyperactivity.

Take care of things like your health, your body, your relationships, your spirituality, and your mindset that only need a little bit of time each day to maintain and yet, are all too often neglected. These are things that are vitally important to your success in life, and yet not one of these things can be maintained by brushing for an hour once a month.

And speaking of.

Brush daily with consistent application of effort.

You’ll be surprised where you end up.