Category: General
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Success is harder than failure
Like many companies, there are oscillations in the “success” of the overall business. Sometimes we just barely meet a goal, sometimes we double it. As we’ve scaled, I’ve generally seen our team’s morale match our performance. Everyone likes winning; no one likes losing. We like knowing that our hard work is putting points on the…
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Wind at our backs
In Bill Gross’ TED talk, he cites timing as a key factor in the success or startup. A great idea, married with great execution, is still reliant on the macro trends that can either carry it, or leave it dead in the water. This has played out for us in meaningful ways. While we’ve been…
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Moving Upmarket
Earlier I’ve written around the skill of operating at different levels of the business – one minute taking a call with a customer around a particular initiative, the next minute planning your goals for the next three years. The human mind is more geared towards focusing on the near term, what’s right under our nose- which…
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Inception
Diplomacy is the art of letting somebody else have your way. – David Frost As Contactually has continued to scale, I’ve given away more and more ownership of the company to the appropriate internal leaders. While I remain ultimately responsible, that doesn’t line up with having ultimate decision making. Any overriding of decisions risks undermining…
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Capturing Ideas
Common present day mantra de-values the idea for new venture, putting much more emphasis on the execution. While I agree, that does not mean the concept itself is meaningless. Ideas for new ventures, products, etc may hit you at any moment. I’ve found it productive to do my best to capture those. Going back to…
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What a Good Employee Onboarding Looks Like
The first few days at my first job out of college at a big company, was, to no surprise, a tedious checklist of forms to fill out and compliance-based sessions. AKA, welcome to the company, here’s how not to get fired, I’ve learned that how you onboard employees makes a huge impact – similar to onboarding…
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A new social fabric
“Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others.” -Winston Churchill Be forewarned; this is one of the more abstract concepts, and therefore posts, that I’ll write about. This has been floating around in my head for some time – an accretion of thoughts rather than a singular concrete idea. In the…
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Levels of Talent
I realize that most of my recent posts are around the common thread of “things I’ve learned scaling a startup” – this, of course, holds true to that expectation. There are a set of common adages related to talent – hire slow + fire fast, don’t screw up culture, don’t cut corners. One of the…
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Relationships are our best asset
We recently celebrated our fifth Founders Day – the anniversary of us incorporating the company on October 11th, 2011. While “Proactive CRM” was the initial idea that we pursued, we’ve spent a fair amount of time articulating what the “big idea” behind it was – and therefore, the impetus for devoting so much time and…
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Advice for New Dads
Our daughter was born over the summer. Like any new father, there is the macadam of emotions, most pervasively the fear of the unknown regarding caring for a new, and completely dependent, life. So I solicited a bunch of advice from friends and, rather than keeping it to myself, put it into an ebook for…