TLDR: Being unapologetically yourself has a certain social and professional gravity to it.
Unapologetic.
A new value I’m stumbling into.
Beyond genuine, I think the term “unapologetic” adds an emotionally detached element, perhaps devoid of compassion.
I think most people would argue that’s not a quality to strengthen, but it seems the more unapologetic I am, the stronger the social and professional gravity becomes.
I mean to say, the less I polish my writing, the less I hold back, the higher the bar I set, the harder I work, and so on and so forth, the greater it resonates.
I obsess over the details of my job the same way I used to obsess over the game of baseball growing up. You don’t win games because you showed up, you win games because you outworked the other team. You don’t win games by being naturally gifted, you win games by having a higher IQ about the game itself.
Kobe Bryant famously woke up and trained at 4am. The logic? If he got an extra workout in before everyone else’s two-a-days, those habits would compound over decades and separate him from the competition. Fair to say he was right.
That’s an unapologetic view on work ethic.
The more I watch the undisputed greats, the more I realize work-life balance is a construct of the average. Something we tell ourselves to justify not being the best.
Sam Altman for example says that if work is burning you out, you’re not working on the right thing.
Jensen Huang, the CEO of NVIDIA, says don’t try to be a founder, it’s not worth it, but if you do, he hopes bad things happen to you to teach you the resilience you’ll need.
Most people think this is insane, but it’s not their fault, they simply don’t understand the mindset and the call to action.
As a friend once shared with me when asked why he does it, “if you have to ask the question, you wouldn’t understand the answer.”
I suppose that means most people reading this won’t understand it either.
For those of you in the pro work-life balance camp, you don’t need to justify it—no one is asking you to. It’s ok to lose to the obsessed. It’s ok not to let their scorecard be your scorecard. In fact, it’s arguably better to not even try because the odds are that you can’t out-focus and you won’t out-work the maniacs anyway.
Why try something that will only end in defeat and cost you an immeasurable amount of your life as it compounds down a different and unhappy path?
No one shames Steve Jobs for obsessing over product. Well not no one, but those who did probably regret it.
No one shamed Brian Chesky for 18-hour days during COVID, but who would’ve thought a hospitality business predicated on being in other people’s homes would exit a global lockdown stronger than it entered?
No one really shames the greats other than to say they’re not always the easiest or nicest to work with, but I’m beginning to think they’re just unapologetic in their pursuit of their own potential.
You could argue, if they’re working on something big enough, it’s actually the more compassionate thing—to focus on the system, the business and its impact, rather than the sub-system, how other people view you as one individual.
The more I’ve posted my calendar, my approach to my work, and the expectations I have for others, the more clarity I and those around me have.
The more I’ve clarified the culture I want to foster, the more I have pushed some people away, but importantly, I have pulled others, the right ones, closer too.
That latter notion of gravity is an important one. And a compounding one.
A compounding one that creates access to great deals by virtue of network—talent attracts talent. A compounding one in the way the team executes and the results we deliver. A compounding one in our expectations of what it takes to receive a check from me or someone on my team. These are all important virtues as a function of preserving of our investors’ capital, and redirecting it towards those who also see the value in conviction, passion, and have the will to win.
The reason I think VC hit rates are so absurdly low in the early stage game is not only because building and picking are both undeniably hard, but because, by definition, the average VC is pattern recognizing other average people.
It’s easier to fall back on The Power Law to define your strategy. Like picking the right number in Roulette, picking a unicorn in venture has about a 2.6% chance too. But when the winner pays back 10,000 to 1 instead of 35 to 1, you might as well play every square. At least that’s what most accelerators would have you believe.
But that’s why we obsess over the job. To fine tune those details, to challenge the status quo, to systematically increase the odds, to be right when others are wrong, and to produce outsized results.
Maybe I’ve offended a few people with this post, but the reality is that average is a function of numbers, not a slight at anyone.
A function of economic competition, not a perception of whether someone is better or worse than someone else.
No judgement, just objective reality.
It’s simply the way people choose to spend their finite time that compounds into who they become, how good they are at what they do, how big the surface area of their luck becomes, and how they develop their edge over time. All of which also happen to be an exponent on one another when you’re unapologetically yourself.
But remember, no one is requiring you to be great. In fact, no one is even defining what great is. It’s ok to hang up the cleats, and let the rest of us take the wheel.
In the meantime, consider this post an invitation to be unapologetically yourself—even if that means tapping out of the game because you can’t keep up.
See you Monday.