Life

No matter what you set out to do, random things will occur in life.

A missed flight.

A sick kid.

A relative that falls on hard times.

Losing your job.

You can have the best intentions, but as long as you are alive something that you never thought could or should happen to you will happen. So what do we do knowing this is true? Well, you stay focused on doing things one step at a time. One foot in front of the other. Keep fighting for what you believe in and eventually, all things will work out.

Getting back to the basics

I hate how I get in the way of my own progress. I know that’s a bad way to start off a blog, but I’m definitely feeling pretty disappointed in myself today. Life is pretty simple when you break it down. Achieving monumental goals is also a relatively simple thing to do as well. Only if you know how to break things down into small bite-sized steps.

I’ve recently built out new 90 day goals for myself and they are pretty lofty, but I know that in order to achieve them I’ve got to get back to the basics. It starts with my routine, and that routine is super simple. Go to bed at a reasonable hour, wake up and read, send my mom a voice note, meditate for at least 5 minutes and do this (write in my blog). I rarely get to the writing part. And it’s only because I rarely start the routine how I’m supposed to start it.

But no more! I’m back to the basics starting with this post. I will commit myself to execute my routine because when I do, I’m my best version of myself!

The Long Game: Part 2

I have a bone to pick with society right now. We are being pushed down the dangerous path of “instant gratification” and it’s starting to really piss me off. Hustle culture is now frowned upon and I don’t think that’s right.

Since when did hard work and dedication become taboo?

Since when did longevity and commitment become taboo?

News flash – Not everyone in this world is meant to be a startup founder, athlete, or influencer. The world needs doctors, lawyers, engineers, accountants, teachers, nurses, etc. The world needs more people who don’t mind dedicating their LIVES to just one thing/career path. The great resignation is going to lead to bad things. Think about what we’re celebrating! We are celebrating “resignation”. Just let that sit in for a bit. We are happy about people quitting their jobs in the pursuit of happiness? I know there are legitimate cases of people who need better work environments and need to focus on mental health, but give me a break y’all. We ALL don’t have mental health issues. We are just soft. Sorry, it had to be said. Let’s get back to building careers. Let’s get back to spending years developing our crafts. The world needs experts.

90 Day Challenge

So I’ll start today’s blog off by announcing my participation in Design Pickle’s 90 Day Challenge. One of the things that I’ve recognized over my life is that I have a tendency to work really hard in spurts and then burn out and cruise for a time.

This behavior was really dangerous early on in my career and led to a lot of bad habits for myself. I still deal with this issue today, and I’m constantly looking for ways to break this cycle. What I’ve noticed is that I lack a consistent daily routine that supercharges my day and allows me to get into “flow”. I talked about this issue with our CEO at Design Pickle (Russ), and he suggested I try this crazy challenge he’s running for the company called the 90 Day Challenge.

I won’t get into the nitty-gritty of what the challenge is based upon, but I will say this. All great things don’t just happen. They happen because there is an intentional effort to make them happen. For example, I set out to become a leader and executive at Design Pickle almost 7 years ago. I made a decision out of Purdue that I would forgo working at Ernst & Young to pursue small businesses and startups. I knew that working at startups would eventually lead to faster professional growth and more opportunities. It was an intentional decision on my part to go down this path and it eventually led to me becoming the CFO of a venture-backed company.

Saying all that to hopefully inspire some folks but because of the challenge I now have new goals and targets for myself and it feels amazing! They are as follows: Run a 5K, pass the FAR section of the CPA Exam, take my mom to Sedona and deliver a public speech about SaaS metrics.

Onward!

Growth + Profitability

As we closed out the prior year and got started on the year ahead we’ve made a switch in our financial strategy. Growth has traditionally been the core focus of our business (not just revenue growth, but the growth of our teams). A core focus on growth is key in the earlier stages of startups to prove product-market fit, but once the company reaches a more mature stage it’s important to sustain growth and reach profitability.

I see too many companies focus all of their energies on growth in an effort to chase valuations. I will say this strategy works only up to a certain point. Once valuations are attained and capital has been raised the company has a fiduciary responsibility to return this capital to its investors. This is where we turn to a beautiful metric called the rule of 40.

The rule of 40 is a great health measurement that accurately depicts the companies ability to properly balance the trade-off between short-term investments in growth and long-term profitability. Good to great tech companies have the ability to consistently outperform the rule of 40 and capture what most believe to be the “upper-echelon” of exit multiples. To calculate the rule of 40 you add your revenue growth rate with your profit margin and if it’s greater than 40 you are in great shape. For example, Company A has a year-over-year growth rate of 30% and a profit margin of 25%. This means that Company A has a 55 on the rule of 40 (30%+25%). It is a super simple calculation, but it is so powerful to understand and manage venture-backed tech companies with.

My Biggest Fight

So today I made a huge decision and I’m going to use my blog to keep me honest.

I’m finally going to get in shape and lose some pounds. I used to always be in shape because of football, but ever since I stopped playing (10 years ago) I’ve been on a treacherous journey with my weight. I’m not ok with how I look and I’m definitely not ok with what the scale has to say.

I’ve recently downloaded and subscribed to Noom. I’ve heard a lot of good things about the platform and I’m going to give it an honest shot. I’m a little apprehensive about the mountain I have to climb, but I’m doing it for my daughter and family.

I’ll post some check-ins periodically just to keep a log of my progress. Wish me luck!

I’m back! Let’s talk about routines

So it’s been a while since my last blog post. I had a nice initial run and it was definitely one of my best months this year, but it was really hard to maintain the pace.

I’ve dug into this to understand why I was able to do a blog post every day and it really boils down to one core concept: consistency. In order to execute consistently on really hard things, you must possess two things:

1. Energy
2. Routine

I’m definitely not a pro on the energy piece of this (topic for another post), but I can speak to routines with some level of clarity and hopefully, someone gets value out of my thoughts around it.

Here’s what I know about routines. They are dead in the water if they aren’t well thought out. Before I established my new habit of blogging, I took a strong look at my daily activities and noticed that my mornings were the most productive parts of my day. The second most productive part of the day for me was really late at night. The rest of the day is really structured between work meetings and family.

Knowing this about my day I found that if I were to tailor my day to go to bed earlier and work on things in the morning, I would make more progress towards my goal. The mind is actually much sharper earlier in the morning than it is late at night. Plus you can leverage solid sleeping schedules to enrich your cognitive abilities to retain information. I’ll give you an example of how this is working in practice for me. I’ve recently committed to teaching myself how to program in R and Python. A super difficult thing to learn if you’ve never been exposed to programming languages. As I was researching the best way to do this, I ran across a million articles from people who’ve taught themselves to code and they cite often that going to bed earlier and waking up earlier (like before 6 am early) noticed higher levels of productivity and the ability to learn faster.

This is obviously just my own personal research around it and I encourage you to do your own and experiment but know this. You will never be able to get anything done if it isn’t planned and thought out. I knew that if I didn’t pull in blogging as a part of my morning routine, then I would never get it done. Hence today’s post 🙂

So, my routine is always a work in progress. I’m always testing different things out to help optimize and dial it in. A couple of random tips that always help jumpstart the day:

1. Go to bed early (Before 9 pm preferrably)
2. Do mindful tasks when you first wake up, like meditation of blogging. (Preferrably with a cup of joe or tea)
3. Do the hardest thing FIRST (Can’t tell you how much this matters. If you start off the day attacking the hardest thing on the schedule the momentum created for the rest of the day is enormous.)
4. Be kind to yourself (I say this not to further add fuel to the “toxic positivity” flame, but don’t beat yourself up too much if you miss a day or so on the routine. Just commit to the next day. Get better everyday, don’t worry about being perfect.

It’s really easy to get caught up in life and not plan things out. It takes energy to plan, and execute. It’s doesn’t come naturally. We want to always take the easiest route to success but that route doesn’t actually exist. So keep working on the routine! Once it’s dialed in, you’ll move faster through your goals.

Vulnerability

It’s pretty well known that no one in this world is perfect. But it’s really easy to lose sight of this fact.

Sometimes, I can be a little hard on myself and I’m sure other people would agree with me on this. The only thing that matters is that you continue to learn from your mistakes.

I’ve been taking a deep look at myself and my leadership chops this week and noticed something very interesting. The more vulnerable I am with others, the more others are willing to work with me instead of against me. Vulnerability is a very powerful tool in the leadership toolkit.

It’s important for people to know that you are human. It’s important that they hear you own your mistakes and shortcomings. It shows a level of maturity that not a lot of people possess. I’ve learned that the more I embrace failure around my peers and direct reports, the more they trust in my ability to lead.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen this play out at work.

Try saying things like, “I understand where the ball was dropped here and I’ll own this.” Or, “You were completely right about that, I’ll work to make the necessary changes.”

The goal should never be about being “right” or having the answer. The goal should be to get better. To grow. Nobody is always “right”. Not even you.

Why “playing the long game” matters

Life can be tough.

But do you want to know what can be tougher?

A life that is full of regret.

Playing the long game is all about taking it in stride. Rolling with the punches.

Playing the long game means that you have a vision for your life.

When you play the long game, you make it to the end of your journey with no regrets.

When you play the long game, a sense of satisfaction and fulfillment becomes the norm.

Play the long game and don’t settle for short-term gains.

5 Minute Rule

All big projects and tasks can be broken down into small bite-sized tasks.

If you’re working on something big and you’re having trouble getting started I want you to trick your mind and tell yourself, “This should only take 5 minutes.”

What you’ll find is that you’re inability to just start the task is what’s really holding you back from achieving your wildest goals. Half of the battle is just about showing and having the courage to just get started.

The 5 minute rule is something that I’ve found super helpful over the last couple of days and it’s starting to break my procrastination urges.

Give it a try 🙂 I’m sure you’ll find it useful!

Don’t try to control others

No real fluff or pizazz on today’s post. Only facts.

Recently, I’ve been confronted with a reality of life. There is no such thing as controlling human beings and their actions.

My old football coach used to say, “Control the controllable.” When you’re a high school kid you have no real idea of what that means. It isn’t until you step into the real world and are hit with things that come straight out of left field. It’s easy to forget that people have their own motives and it’s easy to think that everyone sees the world the same way you see it.

This is just not true.

So what can you do about it?

Focus on your effort, focus on your vision and focus on your outputs.

Focus on learning new skills.

Find the white space, the gaps. Where is there an opportunity to grow personally or professionally?

You can only control your thoughts, your actions, and your level of commitment to a worthy ideal.

Technology is getting smarter and we are getting dumber

I’m always scrolling on LinkedIn and seeing random posts about “new product innovations” and how they are revolutionizing the way companies operate.

I know you’ve seen this post: XYZ has unveiled our new cloud service unlocking new database architecture synergies and integrating new warehouse capabilities to speed up decision making and value add to emerging fin techs. 

If you’re like me and probably 90% of the rest of the world you have 0 clue what that actually means in practice. 

My point is that technology is getting smarter. And not just at a linear rate. I’m talking exponentially smarter. How many times have you heard about machine learning or AI disrupting the way we work. 

I think that it’s going to be in everyone’s best interest to realize the speed of which technology is getting smarter and try to match that same level of learning as much as humanly possible. Key word…humanly.

Gratitude Post

Couldn’t think of a real topic to post about today so I figured that I would just write a list of people that I’m grateful for and why.

My mother and father, Racheal and Frank Pace. Thank you for giving me the greatest gift any human can ask for, life.

My wife, Elayna Pace. For always reinforcing my values and believing in me when I didn’t believe in myself.

My brothers, Austin and Ryan. For teaching me how to chase after what you believe in.

My friends, too many to name. For stepping in and becoming more than a friend. Becoming family.

Thank you.

The importance of having a vision

It’s another day, another blog post. Today’s topic: vision.

I don’t think many people understand how to properly have a vision for their life, career, or relationships. I’m naturally good at this as I’m always thinking “big picture” or “playing the long game”.

In essence, that’s exactly what vision is about. It’s your ability to visualize the future. It takes a lot of practice to really hone this in, but the simplest solution that I can give you today is to make time for reflection. Some people do this through meditation, while others do this through writing or reading. There isn’t a one size fits all approach to this, but you need to spend time reflecting on things.

I’ve tried almost every strategy under the sun and I will tell you that the combination of daily writing/journaling and meditation seem to do the trick for me. I’m a huge fan of writing because it allows me to audit my vision. Look back on my thoughts and gauge where I may need to course-correct. Writing can also be very stress-relieving. There have been times where a certain situation at work has really wigged me out and I just need to write out how I’m feeling about it. To summarize this, try everything until you land on something!

Once you’ve built up the self-reflection muscle you will start to have more clarity. Clarity is the real outcome that you want to gain through self-reflection. Clarity will help you answer key questions that will craft your vision.

But, why is it important to have a vision?

Because without it, what are you doing with yourself? I can’t imagine waking up every day not knowing what I’m chasing. The thought of this stresses me out beyond belief. In my opinion, you need something to go after. We are here for only a finite amount of time. Spend it doing something that matters to you.

I hate excuses

I hate excuses more than anything in the world. Not because it’s annoying to hear them but because they rob you blind from being a better person.

I’ve made excuses about my personal health journey, finances, and career. Every time I made an excuse, the time horizon of my achievements was pushed back exponentially.

How did I overcome excuses?

Lead with honesty. Integrity is the killer of all excuses and deceitful behavior. In the past, my reasoning behind the “excuse train” was driven by a fear of people finding out about my laziness or lack of commitment and how they would feel about me after they figured it out. The older I became the more I realized that people’s perception of you is so insignificant. And wasting time dealing with that fear would lead only deep regret and shame.

So honestly who cares? Who cares about what people think and or say. Lead with honesty and find a way to get better every day. Just 1% better.

Data is King

I’m going to write about something today that’s been on my mind for a long time now.

Data.

It’s so bad that I’m having dashboard dreams. I’m not kidding. If you’ve ever worked with datasets/tables for an extended period of time then you have probably had the “data dream”.

Anyway, I’m addicted to data and the impact that it has on business decisions. I’m Head of Finance at Design Pickle, but my daily efforts now have transitioned into helping craft the data strategy at our company and I LOVE IT. I’m in love with diving in and organizing/visualizing.

In my profession, it used to be “Cash is King”, which let’s be honest still holds some merit. BUT, in today’s working environment “Data is King”. Data influences product strategy, marketing and go-to-market, operations, customer success, and finance…at the same time.

My favorite quote around this is “It doesn’t matter what problem you are trying to solve and whom you are trying to solve it for, the answer is somewhere in the data.”

Don’t ask me who said this…maybe it was in my dream 🙂

Execution

The word of the week for me is execution.

I think people get caught up in the thousands of secondary and tertiary items that don’t really move the needle on anything important. So with that being said, in order to execute at the highest level, you first need to identify and focus on the most important tasks/projects.

After identifying the most important tasks/projects, now it’s about making the time and space to actually work on those things. If we’re being honest about this, most people maybe spend 5-10% of their day doing the 1-2 things that actually matter. The other 90-95% is sitting in pointless meetings, shooting the shit at the office, or aimlessly perusing the internet.

Delete meetings from your calendar (if you have that power), re-schedule meetings to be closer together, and build focus time into your calendar. Focus time is so important. Make it a thing! Find a new working space, invite other colleagues to join. I can definitively tell you that when you do this with someone else you tend to get more done. Some people don’t always work well with others and I get that, but it’s just like running or working out. It’s harder to go at it alone than it is with someone else.

Execution is a choice. You have to choose where to point your energy and how to spend your 24 hours. In business, you have to optimize your time to get the most out of yourself and your team.

Executioners are ultimately the people who win in business. Be that person.

More than a finance guy

I had a really interesting conversation with my wife, Elayna. I asked her a question that I’ve never asked her before. “Why do you think I’m in the right profession?”

The answer was pretty shocking and revealing. “I think you’re more than a finance guy, Frank. I think you’re good at the job, but I don’t believe it’s what you’re supposed to be doing.”

Thanks, babe. Way to throw a monkey wrench into the career there. (I’m obviously kidding and I’m not having a mid-career crisis or anything).

In all seriousness, it’s important to have periodic check-ins like these. I know where I want to ultimately take my career and it’s just good to poke someone else’s brain that knows you. Spouses can be a huge advantage in this regard. The wife and I met at college, and we’ve been designing our future together for the last 10 years. It’s been an incredible journey, but it’s also such a competitive edge over my peers.

Elayna pushes me and makes me better. She calls out my BS, and makes sure that whatever I’m pursuing in my life and career that it aligns back to what makes Frank Pace great.

So if I’m not a finance person, what am I?

Well, I’m a builder, an optimizer, a lover of creation, a grower. When I’m working on things that speak to these traits I’m doing my best work. And at the end of the day, the goal is to do your best work.

Writer’s block is real

Trying to find things to blog about on a daily basis is a mental grind. Being in the world of finance, I stress a lot about getting things right. You can’t really half-ass the numbers or put forth a mediocre analysis for decision-making. In my line of work, accuracy reigns supreme.

Blogging is not about getting things right. For me, it’s about getting better every day and sticking to a simple commitment: Write something meaningful every day and share it.

But I’ve learned about this crazy phenomenon called writer’s block. Creativity is a hard skill to master and writer’s block mixed with a perfectionist’s brain presents a crazy challenge to write every day.

What I’ve done to combat this is to just stick to the routine of opening the laptop at the same time daily and reflect on something that is top of mind. The topics usually flow from there. For example, today when I sat down to write this blog I ask myself “What should I write about?”. This led me to go down rabbit holes of topics and I never really landed on anything.

I then started to research writer’s block and voila!

To tie this all back to the theme of the blog, writer’s block can be eliminated by not judging myself or my thoughts. I just sit down and let it flow! One of these days this will be so much easier, but for now, it’s time to grind it out.

Resilience

I’m going to keep today’s blog short and sweet.

Today marks a special day in my self-discipline journey. I’ve officially blogged every day for 5 days straight. Monday through Friday is in the books.

I think the only word that comes to my mind that could properly summarize the effort to blog every day is resilience.

Resilience:

1. the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties; toughness.
2. the ability of a substance or object to spring back into shape.

To the next week of blogs!

What all of us can learn from babies

Today’s blog is about my beautiful baby girl Jordyn! She’s recently turned 5 months old and it’s quite incredible.

The wife and I have always wanted to build a family, but it’s pretty wild what happens when you actually CREATE A HUMAN. Every day she’s doing something new that she couldn’t do the day before. Just recently she’s started to hold her own bottle without assistance and this was the most spectacular development to me!

Since I now consider myself a blogger, I’m always looking for little insights to write about. Watching Jordyn grow every day has taught me something about human possibility and achievement and I want to share it with the world 🙂

Babies don’t know anything about life yet and all of the distractions and emotional challenges. All they know is I’m hungry, I’m wet, and I’m tired. Everything else to them is purely about exploration! What’s this foot thing about? I’m going to put it in my mouth and taste it. (I’m describing my daughter eating her foot by the way). The point is everything is new and there is no real fear of failure but only the urge to explore and try.

I think we all need to approach life with this lens. So what if you don’t know how to do something at your job. Throw your hat in the ring to learn and explore something different. Trust that you will come out on the other end a better and improved individual.

Recently, I’ve decided to take on two new things in my life and career. This blog is one of them and tackling data science and business analytics at work is the other. Partly because both of these things previously scared the hell out of me. But I’m learning every day and more importantly, I’m getting better at these things every day. Thanks, Jordyn 🙂

Oh, and he’s a cute picture of my baby girl. She’s absolutely adorable and when she gets older and starts asking Daddy for money, I will be broke. Who can say no to her?!

Jordyn

KPIs and Metrics that I can’t get enough of

I’ve been on a huge data kick lately. So much so, that I’ve been dreaming about our dashboards at Design Pickle 🙁 This is not good, and I probably need to step away from the spreadsheets but hey…when you love something you just can’t get enough.

Here’s a couple of really cool and important metrics that I love tracking and diving into. In no particular order:

1. ARR – Annual Run Rate. Monthly recurring revenue annualized.
2. Gross Margin – As a percentage.
3. EBITDA – Both $, and as a percentage
4. LTV – Lifetime Value
5. LTV:CAC Ratio – CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost)
6. CAC Payback in Months
7. ROAS – Return on Ad Spend
8. Net Revenue Retention – Trailing 12 month basis

We track so much more than this as these are more lagging indicators. The real fun begins when you dissect the leading indicators that drive these numbers. Also, I will note that these are more SaaS/Software financial measures. Some things can work for other industries and the fundamentals are the same: How much revenue and at what margin? Are we profitable financially and is our acquisition model profitable and scalable? And most importantly…for every dollar spent on sales and marketing, what’s my return on that dollar? 

Why I believe greed is bad

Ran across a crazy story on Twitter this morning as I was gearing up for the day. It was from Hadi Partovi the CEO of code.org. He was describing a moment early on in his career when he and his co-founders pitched Steve Jobs. As the story goes, Hadi lied to Steve about valuation and Steve read through his lie. Steve eventually didn’t believe anything that Hadi had to say from this point and went on to build a competing product that eventually led to the destruction of Hadi’s startup. (Facebook also destroyed the startup).

If you want to see the full detail of the story check it out here, but I read that story and walked away with a very interesting insight.

I don’t necessarily think greed makes you a bad person. There are some stories around greed that traditionally have led to this thinking. I truly believe that the core reason greed is bad is that it robs you of opportunity.

From my experience, an opportunity is one of the most important aspects of success in business and life. Opportunity can sometimes be the difference between living a standard and boring life vs. living a life of fulfillment and achievement. Opportunity comes to those who seek it, but it also avoids those who lie and deceive to capture it. So be bold…not greedy. Be courageous…not deceptive.

Deep Work

So I forgot to add a book to October’s reading. It isn’t a new book that I’ve picked up but I thought I’d share one of my classics that I’m revisiting this month.

It’s called Deep Work by Cal Newport. The subtitle reads “Rules for focused success in a distracted world.” If you are trying to advance in your career and relatively quickly, do yourself a favor and read this book.

The ability to do deep work is a skill that I’m trying to master. This basically means spending a significant amount of time focusing on really important work and not being distracted while doing so.

There are so many crucial tips that are given in the book, but I love the tip on how you should execute like a business with your time and focus. You do this through leveraging 4 simple disciplines:

1. Focus on the Wildly Important
2. Act on the Lead Measures
3. Keep a Compelling Scoreboard
4. Create a Cadence of Accountability

There is so much more here to talk through and write up, but just go grab the book.

Great data analysis starts with the right questions

I’ve been on a data kick lately and it’s really fascinating the things I’m learning.

What I’ve noticed is that all business intelligence applications are just tools. The real beauty in data science and intelligence is the person behind the analysis. More specifically, it’s the type of questions that person is asking to arrive at the analysis.

I’ve researched and read a lot of help articles online about different BI tools and they all do the basic things similarly. I would argue that Power BI and Tableau will allow for more customizations and integrate well with businesses that adopt a shared data model….but for the novice startups and businesses you really don’t need that crazy of a tool to get started.

What you need to do before anything is ask yourself very detailed questions about your business.

Why do customers convert with a specific ad?
What about the ad made them convert or not convert?
What are the utilization rates of our longest tenured clients and how are they engaging with our product?
Who are our longest tenured clients and where did they come from? Are there more of them? Where?

I’ve got a long day ahead of me tomorrow…I’m going to spend my entire day asking myself questions about all of these aspects of the business and after I do that…I’m going to dive head first into our data.

October’s Reading

Every month I will share about the books that have my current attention. I tend to read in sprints. I’ll read a lot during a given period of time and then go act on what I’ve learned. Speaking of that, I tend to read very pragmatic books. They aren’t always motivational in nature but they do inspire me.

Here’s the 2 books I’m currently reading.

1. Crucial Conversations by Patterson, Grenny, McMillan, Switzler

This book’s subtitle is “Tools for talking when stakes are high.” I picked this book up recently because I noticed that my day to day was becoming more conversational in nature. I needed some type of framework to help me understand how I should be approaching my conversations and how I could learn to be a more effective conversationalist and negotiator. Super interesting read, and I’ve learned a ton already about myself.

2. Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin

This book is an extremely popular leadership book. I was told by someone that was kind of my mentor…more on that later…that this was the #1 most important book to read if you wanted to understand how to be a great leader. I couldn’t agree more. I could go on for paragraphs about why taking extreme ownership in any situations is a great life skill, but I’ll spare you the monologue. Just do yourself and anyone else you manage a favor and go pick up this book. You won’t be disappointed.

Happy reading 🙂

UltraWorking

This year I was turned on to a new method of working called UltraWorking. It’s been a total game changer in how I structure my work and how I’m expecting my teams to work.

It’s essentially a very focused time period of hyperfocus where work is done in 30 minute cycles/sprints with 10 minute reflection periods and time to plan the next cycle.

The reason this works for me is because I’m easily distracted by a ton of random tasks that don’t necessarily mean anything and UltraWorking gives me a GREAT reason to shut out the outside world and focus.

I’m also a huge fan of anything that requires a massive amount of discipline and focus and UltraWorking is the best for this. Check out the website if you’re interested! They’ve got a great app called Headquarters that streamlines the entire work cycle process!

https://www.ultraworking.com/

Happy cycling 🙂

Data

It’s been a while since I’ve posted and I’ve already failed miserably on the daily post commitment 🙁

But, it’s ok because it’s a new habit and I’m going to cut myself some slack.

NOW….let’s talk data and why I’m in love with it.

My job has now transitioned into being more of a business partner to decision making. Something that I love doing. I’ve always thrived in roles that have allowed me to make decisions.

A big part of making great decisions is having a high level of conviction in the data that supports the decision. I know this sounds pretty elementary but I can’t tell you how many times I’ve ran across teams or leaders that don’t lead with the right data.

Data (and numbers in general) tell the story of what’s really happening. It’s like going to the doctor to get a physical. Checking your vitals gives the doctor the proper numerical output for them to suggest the next proper course of action and healthcare.

My work now is all about finding out what is the single source(s) of truth and operationalizing the data to make the best decision. The how behind this is the really cool and exciting part 🙂 More to come on this later!

Focus

Focus is a hard thing to accomplish. I’ve experienced a couple of setbacks in the last 48 hours that have caused me to not focus on what’s the most important in my life and career.

So I guess the question is how do you focus?

How do you block out the things that hold you back?

This is going to sound really corny, but it’s about finding your purpose and analyzing every situation and challenge through the lens of purpose.

Growing up in Indianapolis is was so interesting. On one hand, I was a single child that had almost everything. I say the word almost because my parents weren’t together.

Now, I have never wrote about this or talked about this with them but not having both parents in the house hurt me a lot. I wanted it so bad. I saw my father thrive in his life and I saw my mother work harder and struggle in her life.

All I ever wanted to do was take care of my mom. She is the most caring and selfless person in the world. And I didn’t think it was fair for her struggle. One day I came home from college and I went over to my mother’s house. At the time she was pretty sick and I didn’t really understand what was going on. The house wasn’t really being taken care of and the winters in Indianapolis can be brutal. The home was older and started to develop mold. Everything around my mother was falling apart and there was nothing that I could do about it. There was a gigantic hole in the ceiling in one of the bathrooms and a laundry list of issues with the house.

I went back to college that evening but I promised myself to do everything in my power to take care of my mother financially so she would never subject herself again to that type of environment. A couple of months after my visit, my mom was admitted into the hospital for heart disease. The mold had worsened and developed a serious condition called myocarditis that gave my mother heart failure. The doctor literally told me “Your mother needs a new heart”…This was the worst thing I had ever been told in my life…and I couldn’t handle it. She would eventually get bypass and it fixed her condition.

This moment pretty much defined what would I would focus on for the rest of my life. I knew that my purpose in life was to build a future to take care of those that I loved most. People say that money can’t buy you happiness but the pursuit of money to me is not about being happy. The pursuit of money is about taking care of your loved ones.

We are all here for a finite amount of time and we waste so much of it on things that will never serve us.

When I get put into situations or come across challenges, I always remind myself of my mother. When I struggle with focus, I ask myself a very important question. “What’s your purpose?” This almost always resets my emotional pallette and allows me to remove my ego from whatever situation I find myself in.

So I guess blocking out distractions is all about making space for reflection. Mental exercises like meditation, prayer or journaling are all ways to accomplish this. I’m so thankful that I went through that experience with my mom because without it I would still be searching for my purpose.

I’m killing my to-do list

To-do’s are so distracting.

No one that I’ve ever talked to that has climbed in their career manages to-do lists. Instead they manage their time.

My new strategy is time blocking – more specifically using the time blocking strategy as my new “pseudo” to-do list.

This let’s me stay in control of my day and it works almost like a natural delegation mechanism. If it isn’t something that I can fit into my calendar than it is most likely a task that someone on my team can handle or should handle.

I have a natural inclination to just take on action items because I can and not because I’m probably the best person to take on the task.

Using this post as an accountability measure honestly. And hopefully it inspires someone to look at how they manage time.

Here’s probably the best post I’ve ever read on time blocking. Have fun 🙂

Welcome to my blog

I’ve been inspired lately by the works of Seth Godin. He’s famously created one of the most successful blogs in the universe and he literally blogs EVERY DAY. Like doesn’t miss a beat.

I admire that so much. Especially when you have such a crazy career that can pull you into a million different directions but you still have the wherewithal to sit down and crank out blog posts day after day.

So, I’ve decided to see if I can create the same.

My point of starting this blog is not to sell books or courses.

I don’t intend on using the success (or failure) of the following to build adjacent businesses.

I simply want to start a new habit of journaling/blogging daily and hopefully someone will gain some value out of my thoughts.

I think that’s the reason why Seth’s blog is so incredible to me. It’s beautifully simple and relatable. There have been so many random pieces of information that float through my head on a daily basis that should hold their spot in the world.

Here’s to Seth and here’s to my thoughts 🙂

Oh, and here’s Seth’s blog. Enjoy!