Troy Sultan

Friends, family, homies! 

I'm 28 today and inspired by a friend's annual birthday letters reflecting on the previous year so I'm stealing trying it. 

Wrapping up 27, I feel patient and at peace with the pace of things. Odd because I'm used to a felling of rush, time pressure - not enough time!

This past year was the best of my life in many ways and also the most uncomfortable. 

It’s about the journey they say, not the destination. Got it. Slow down to speed up. Right. 

Ok I’m feeling poetic:

Staring from the window of a train you see a greenish-brown blur of trees but can't for the life of you focus on any individual one. There's so much detail on each tree, it’s impossible to see unless you stop to examine them. That’s why I’m writing this. I'm stepping off the train to take a closer look at the trees passing by. 28 so far. 

I’m learning to appreciate the details around me and care more about parts of the world that don’t directly fit into The Plan. Most interestingly I’m developing a deep awareness and appreciation for those who built the train I'm riding on. I’m grateful. Without the help of sooo many people (for no reason apparent to me) I’d have no window to stare through. I spent most of my life believing I earned what I had because I worked for it but until know I didn’t recognize all of the sacrifice others made for me. I was blind to an elaborate support system holding me up. 

This past year gave me clarity: I’m insanely lucky. 

I woke up to a new reality: people I’d hardly recognized as a supporting cast were actually the main characters all along! Something I couldn’t unsee once I saw it. In every crevasse of my life there was someone holding me up, contributing, supporting, helping, pushing me along, caring. I never saw it before. 

One of my fav DFW quotes:

There’s two fish swimming along who happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says, “Morning, boys, how’s the water?” And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes, “What the hell is water?”

The last several months I’ve been overwhelmed with gratitude. I wake up sometimes and pinch myself. It turns out it wasn’t me and the hard work I was doing. It was other people and the hard work they were doing. It’s a drastically different perspective on the world around me.

A willingness to put my ego aside let me see and feel these things for the first time. Something I used to consider a strength turned out to be a blind spot. 

For the first time I’m going to sleep with less of a monkey-mind, race-against-the-clock feeling and instead smiling at a feeling gratitude. How fucking lucky am I, seriously? 

I’m genuinely fulfilled internally without the need for validation externally. 

The trees pass too fast and are too blurry in hindsight to only focus on the destination. What I’ve learned is to enjoy the journey - truly - and become a student again. 

Who am I really? What kind of life do I want? What do I really love? Let’s find more of that stuffs. 

It’s always easier and more pleasurable to focus on your talents and strengths but being aware of vulnerabilities is the only way to improve them. I’m learning that leadership (any form of it really) is not a role of power as much as being in service of those around you.

Love the day-to-day. Anything less isn’t worth it. Happiness shouldn’t have to mean sacrifice. The journey actually is becoming the destination. 

Damn! What a year. 

Until the next one,

What if you didn’t care what people thought of you? Would you make decisions differently? I would.   

I’m a tiny fish in San Francisco. A minnow. Everyone around me is smarter, richer and more followed. It’s a gift and a curse — both inspiring and deflating. 

But who am I living for? I remind myself every day that I’m living for me and no one else. I don’t have the luxury of caring what other people think. 

I don’t think I’m alone. 

Most of us do things for the approval of others. It’s natural. We want to be liked. We want to feel important. You might not know it, but I’m fighting an urge to impress you right now, writing simple, small words instead of bigger ones that might make me sound smarter. 

I’m pushing myself to care less, so that’s what I'm writing about this week. Or, as it’s written proudly at the top of my to-do, “Give zero f*cks”. 

And you should too. Here are some things that'll help:  

Own your awesomeness 

We all have flaws that make us insecure. That’s ok — luckily we all have awesome traits too. That’s why our friends love us. You love me right? 

……..Hello? 

Regularly reminding yourself what makes you awesome helps build confidence and increases swag. 

Major. Increase. In. Swag.  

Create mechanisms to help you remember. Think back to recent compliments that made you feel good. There’s probably a few memorable ones that stuck. Think about them. Write them down. Read them every day. 

Have a friend who constantly reminds you how great/funny/smart/baller you are? Hang out with them more. And ditch the ones who don’t.

Seriously.  

Stop over-thinking 

Wondering why someone didn’t text you back? Relax, they don’t hate you. They’re just busy. And if someone does hate you, who cares? 

Onward. Here’s something I remind myself when I’m afraid to publish something I write: 

If you take the safe route, it’s just that -- safe. Which means no one will hate you, but no one will love you either. When you take a strong stance, some will disagree strongly. That’s ok. More importantly, the people who agree will feel a real connection with you. They’ll become your fans, followers and evangelists. 

So in short, just be you and accept that not everyone will hop on the train. The ones who do are the only ones who matter anyway.  

Stop comparing 

All the people making you feel like a lesser you — you know, the ones with nice cars and flashy things and good jobs? Most of them are miserable. Truuuuust me. Most of what you see is bullshit.

These people are doing exactly what we’re deciding not to do — live life for other people. Ha! Suckers.  

I'll leave you with one thing to think about this week: 

Notice any urge you have to do or say something to impress someone. Then remember that your friends (hi!) and family love you because of your unique, amazing qualities -- not because of what you lack. 

So be *unapologetically* proud of who you are — the good parts and the bad — and stay true to that. 

Note: this post was originally published to my email list on Jan 4, 2016. 

Happy new year all :)

I wanted to write on my New Year’s resolutions, but as I thought about what they might be, a voice inside me kept screaming “bullshit”.

I don’t believe in New Year’s resolutions. Resolutions, sure; but not ones born on New Year’s. If you know me, you know I’m all for people make productive change and getting more from their lives (and helping if I can). If incrementing the date by one count is necessary for you to make that change, so be it. But I don’t believe life is long enough to let New Year's be your only forcing function. 

New Year’s is arbitrary (as it relates to change) and it shouldn’t be necessary to convince yourself that the time is now. You have to manage your psychology, not the other way around. 

Resolutions should be made every day, at near the rate you recognize areas to improve. It’s about making 1% change every day, which compounds, not waiting until the ball drops and trying to change everything over night. That rarely works. 

Ever noticed how crowded the gym is in January vs. February? 

We should be should constantly the pit in our stomach. Meaning, every day we don’t feel terrified about what’s next, we're not making enough change. 

If you’re not mildly nauseous about the meeting you’re walking into, the call you’re about to take, the text you’re about to send — you’re not growing. And if you’re not growing, you’re dying. 

We're creatures of habit, and change is uncomfortable. We like comfort. We like the known. Having information is our most valued security. 

Change is the opposite: unknown, insecure, information-starved. It’s our best guess at an uncertain future. 

I believe the vehicle for finding success is discomfort. Being at or near your discomfort tolerance for as many life-hours as possible. It sounds like torture, but it’ll force you to grow far faster than the known, comfortable route.

Which is why we should constantly chase the feeling of having a pit in our stomach. 

Do you think I was comfortable publishing my first blog post? Or any of them for that matter? Quite the opposite.  

Every year I try to make one major change that scares the shit out of me, and every day I try to make a smaller one that makes me just uncomfortable enough. Each one has led to breakthroughs for me, big and small. So I started seeking out that feeling in my stomach.

Everyone makes changes once in a while, but the change-to-time ratio is what determines trajectory. 

Your gut, deep down, almost always knows the right call (leave your job, break up with your significant other, move to a new city, have the hard conversation, etc etc). But it’s so easy to let another year or two or five pass before you pull the trigger.

If you let this happen at every inflection point in life, you'll lose 1, 5, 10 years of time. And that kills your rate of change. It kills your trajectory. 

Keep a pulse on what your gut tells you and push yourself to pull the trigger as fast as you can. Don’t wait until tomorrow. 

If you do force a new year’s resolution out of me, it’s to put myself in more uncomfortable situations — and I’d love for you to join me.

Break the mold of your every day routine. Get uncomfortable. Ask how similar today looks to yesterday, and if the answer is “very,” change something. Let's chase the pit in our stomachs together. 

Here’s to an insanely uncomfortable 2016 with lots of change and growth, trusting our instincts, and the foresight to know what doesn't make sense to us now will make perfect sense in the end. 

LET’S DO THIS.

While most people opt for Sunday fun, I find it the best day to get stuff done.

With chaos and distraction being common themes of a normal workweek, it seems there’s never enough time to get ahead. Inevitably, there’s a fire that needs fighting.

Because of this, I find solace on Sundays. A day for forward thinking; planting seeds for our company’s future and for my own. It’s by far the most productive day of my week.

In the land of startups there’s always more streamlining to be done, more process to be built and refined, more blog posts to be written (hey!). It seems impossible to find time for these things during the week because of those pesky fires.

But on Sundays there are no customers. There are no emails or phone calls. There are no expectations.

Why? Because everyone’s at the beach!

On Sundays you’re the only one working. A day where your priorities are dictated by no one else but you. A day of freedom from your inbox and calendar. And the level of focus this brings is better than the trendiest of brain-enhancing drugs.

“But Troy! Burnout is real. Do you even read Harvard Business Review, bro?”

Here’s the thing. Burnout comes from pushing yourself too hard over a certain period of time - small instances of stress, anxiety, pressure - building up with no outlet.

“ARGHHH, my Google Drive is a mess,” you’ll say during the week. “I have to reorganize this damn thing.” Ta-da! Great candidate for your Sunday to-do.

You see, this isn’t as much a “work” day as it is a day of tackling the things that make your life easier later - the things that will lessen your stress burden throughout the week. A day for investing in the week ahead so that you don’t burnout.

Of course, reorganizing your files is only the beginning. Here’s an easy trick for building your Sunday to-do list: 

Each time a thought begins with “We (or I) should...,” write it down. You’re probably on to something:

“We should look into a better tool for X”

“We should rethink our customer onboarding process”

“I should write a blog post on Y”

..and so on.

For items like these, it’s hard to justify pausing what you’re doing to tackle them right away. They’re the elusive species of to-do which seem important but “now” is never a good time. These are a beautiful fit for a sunny Sunday.  

On Monday, you’ll feel energized by an investment you made which generates daily residual value well into the future. You’ve eliminated small stressors and cognitive overhead that might otherwise contribute to burnout.

Yes, I just made a case for why working Sundays might actually lessen your chance of burnout and make you happier during the week. 

So, in closing, don’t be afraid to bail on brunch. Don’t worry, your friends will still love you. 

We’ve lost a friend. A beautiful person. Someone the world was better with in every way. A problem solver. A smile inducer. A brilliant mind is gone, and so many brilliant ideas with it.

The last post I wrote was titled Grooveshark is Gone. At the time, the loss of Grooveshark felt like the loss of a friend. I knew Grooveshark as more than a corporation, I knew it as a family. A few dozen smiling faces and crazy unique personalities. People I love and who I’ll be close to forever.

Except one of them. My stomach is in a knot. Josh is gone. The strongest personality - the smartest, kindest, funniest, most fun, most optimistically out-there soul in the entire world just left us. Too fucking soon. And I can’t wrap my mind around it.  

Should we brace ourselves for this kind of loss this early in life? Should we accept that any night we may go to sleep and fail to wake up? Does everyone go through this or are we just less fortunate than most?

I’m sad and angry and confused and in disbelief. I don’t know which to pick. I feel them all. JG. You’re gone. You bet on me when I hadn’t the slightest clue which way was up. You showed me. You believed in me. You told me to “just get down here and we’ll figure it out.” I owe my passion to you. My clarity. My memories. I tried to tell you so many times but you shrugged and refused to take credit. “Dude it was all you, not me.”

You were ADD in the best way possible. Trying to solve everyone's problems -- and succeeding. Never a dumb thing to come out of your mouth. Except when you tried to say something dumb, in which case you chose the dumbest thing possible, further proving your brilliance.

It was you, Josh. It was all you. 

You found ways to make good ideas better and believe in people who didn’t believe in themselves. Nothing was impossible. You represented that. You gave me so much advice without knowing it. All I had to do was watch. And I’m grateful for those memories. I’ll be playing them on repeat.

You were too young and too smart and too good to those around you to go this soon. I may not understand, but I won’t forget.

As I’m sure you’ve heard, Grooveshark is gone. I’m feeling weirdly down, like a I lost a close friend. The years I spent at Grooveshark were the best of my life and I’ll never forget the friends I made, the things I learned and the fun I had. 

It always hurt me that the media portrayed the people behind GS as such bad guys, trying to steal from artists with smiles on their faces. This wasn’t true. Nearly the entire team was made of passionate musicians trying to make the internet a better place for people like them. But what do you do when the only information the public has to go off is the press? You roll with the punches and keep fighting. 

Here’s the notice users got, without any warning, upon visiting grooveshark.com on Thursday, April 30th: 

If you knew the team, you’d know this was written with a forced hand. It’s been a long, uphill battle for Grooveshark and one that I know none of the team regrets. Grooveshark made history, stood up to the labels and ultimately lost, but not without a serious fight. 

I’m sad but I’m looking forward to following the team as they venture off to create more wonderful art. 

To everyone a part of the journey - listeners, fans, musicians, employees, friends - we wrote some history together, and that will never be taken away from us.

They say you’re the average of the 5 people you spend the most time with. Think about that.

Now think about where you need to be at 80 years old in order to be truly happy. Seriously, try this: picture yourself, elderly, sitting on a porch somewhere with a cup of joe (like in the movies), reflecting back on your life. What do you need to have accomplished to be truly happy with your life's work?

Accumulation of wealth? Positive impact on society? To have built something that improves millions of lives? 

Once you know what happiness looks like in the end, life becomes a game (journey, maybe?) of reverse engineering that picture back to today. What do you have to do right now to the next step, which will get you one step closer ro being 80 years old and smiling? 

Success is a game of statistics (plus a fair amount of calculus, but we’ll save that for another post). You have to continually make decisions which put the odds in your favor. It’s not about one play at a craps table (or one big, important decision) - it’s about millions of hands in a game of blackjack over decades of time. Increasing your odds by just a few percentage points can have a tremendous impact on a 50-year trajectory.

There’s many ways to increase your odds: some cheap and easy like creating small habits, yielding minor change and others more challenging and expensive (requiring more time, energy, sacrifice, etc) but which make a greater impact on your odds.

Of all the things you can do, the single most impactful thing is to surround yourself with the right people.

Choosing your friends impacts your life much more than almost any other choice you’ll make. Your friends are the best tools you have to help accomplish your goals. They shouldn’t deflate you, introduce negativity or allow you to get comfortable. They should challenge you to be better. Force you to be on your A game. They should inspire and motivate you. Your friends have *major* impact on your trajectory. Whether that impact is positive or negative is completely up to you.

I used to get analysis paralysis, where I’d over-analyze a situation so much that I’d make no decision at all. It was frustrating and paralyzing. But I eventually figured out what was causing it:

I was trying to make decisions without enough information. Obvious, but I was blind to it.

Some problems require a certain amount of known information in order to be solved. When we attempt to make a decision without enough information, we end up spinning our wheels contemplating and ultimately landing right where we started: on the fence, without a confident decision. Oh, and now we’re exhausted and stressed. If you’ve never had this problem, I’m jealous.

I had a call today with a friend contemplating a job offer he just received. He’s happy at his current job but the offer was compelling - a well-known company, competitive pay, big title, etc. He was walking through the ramifications of accepting vs. rejecting it, taking turns arguing both sides. “I should take it because… but I shouldn’t take it because…” He was paralyzed. It was indeed a really tough call.

This could’ve been avoided (while still arriving at the correct decision) if he didn’t start his contemplation so early, immediately after receiving the offer. He didn’t have enough information yet, so a confident decision could’ve never been arrived at.

I asked if he’s met the team he’d be working with and the manager he’d be reporting to, which he hadn’t. “If you loved all of these people, it would make it an easy yes, right? And if you didn’t like them, it’d be a definite no, right?”

With just a little more information, which may have come in the following day or two, a seemingly impossible decision would’ve turned into an incredibly easy one.

Point being, don’t attempt to make tough decisions before you have all of the information you need. It’s like trying to solve a puzzle that’s missing pieces. You know going into it that it can’t be solved.

Set a trigger that signals when you’re having trouble with a decision, then ask yourself “what piece of information would make this decision really easy to make if I knew it?” Then go hunt it down.

We’re defined by the *aggregate* outcome of the thousands of decisions we’ll make over a lifetime. If we narrow the time we spend contemplating and reallocate it to gathering more information, we’ll put the odds more in our favor. Why does the house ‘always’ win? Because the odds are in it’s favor.

Expressing our thoughts, especially the unpopular ones, is dangerous. Or so we think. It makes us vulnerable and gives people an opportunity to judge. But can that be a good thing?

I think there’s much more to be gained by sharing an unpopular opinion over not sharing one at all. Here’s why: vulnerability is powerful - it’s the main point of connection between people who don’t know each other. Being neutral doesn’t make you friends or enemies.

It’s important to connect with people beyond superficiality. You want to make a human connection with them, not just exchange information mechanically. To do this, you have to find a common shared view or a common shared enemy. This happens by being real and letting people know what you really think and stand for - not by trying to appease them. For those who agree with the real you, this is how relationships form, bonds are made and deals get done. People connect with people they agree with.

Being real will also cause people to disagree and oppose you. That’s OK - this is a great mechanism for identifying which relationships you shouldn’t spend time on. By making ourselves more vulnerable to opposition, we’re also making ourselves more recognizable to potential allies.

Whether you’re looking to make new friends or to close more deals, you should be looking to find other people like you: people who think like you and believe what you believe. These are the best connections you’ll make, both in business and in life.

What have I learned from doing this wrong for so long? It’s always best to be yourself - when meeting new people in person, over email, text or elsewhere. This helps build deeper connections. If you try to be who you think the other person wants you to be, who does that make you?

I had a conversation this morning that got me thinking about delayed gratification and how hard it is to resist a smaller but more immediate reward in order to receive a larger, more enduring reward later.

I think this is a) one of the major differentiating factors between ultimate success and failure and b) a massive opportunity area anyone can exploit to be more successful in their career, relationships, health, finances, etc. (because science).

Training ourselves to think a certain way

Our mindset is something we can change without much overhead and with tremendous ROI. We have to train ourselves to make certain decisions, like saving vs. spending, staying home to get ahead on work vs. going out, or putting up with a not-so-great job that will help boost your career later.

The ability to delay gratification is essential to accomplishing goals. You have to trust that the future will eventually become the present and that you’ll be in a much better position because you previously opted out of the short term reward.

Just get a raise? Save or invest the extra money instead of buying stuff you don't need. That money will become your ability to leave and start your own company later.

Run a business? Give your customer a refund without asking questions, even if it costs you. Being known for amazing customer service will make you much more money later.

Each decision (both macro decisions and small, day-to-day ones) should be made based on its long term effects, not what you’ll get from it right now. Eventually, the “long run” becomes the “now” and you’ll get residual benefit from the previous sacrifices you made that others didn’t.

I’m spending today working from the pacific coastline near Monterey, CA, debating the value of stepping back from work from time to time. I used to think any time spent not working was time wasted, but lately I’m finding value in getting away. I think a little vacation time can be surprisingly productive if you spend it thinking about the right things: Strategy: work smart, not hard It’s really important that we regularly examine our overall strategy - or our plan for achieving a particular goal. I find that getting away from life’s everyday realities makes this easiest. Some call it meditation, some call it planning - I call it zooming out. If we spend 12 hours/day busting our ass on the wrong things, that doesn’t get us very far, does it? Remember, it’s about working smart, not hard. Being in execution mode is useless if we don’t first hash out our strategy. Reflect, identify, calibrate Since we live in the real world where people change, conditions change, and priorities change, it’s important to calibrate yourself against previous goals, taking note of whether you need to correct course (or even change it entirely). In Startupland we call this a pivot. I try to have these self-checkins regularly - monthly if I can. You know yourself best, so feel out what’s most comfortable for you.

Free your mind

This is another thing I struggle with. Finding the answer to a problem or situation doesn’t always come from intensely thinking about it. It comes from the opposite - completely getting it off your mind.

I’ve written before about my ambition to build a meaningful company and my journey of being hired away from my first attempt, taking what seemed like a step backwards. I wanted to put myself in a system that was succeeding to understand how it worked. And although I knew early on that I wanted to build things, that obviously wasn’t much of a plan.

I was easily in the “I’m not sure what I’m doing with my life” bucket.

Leverage what you know

At the time, I knew I liked working with people. I was fascinated by the impact the right person made on a project vs. the wrong one and I thought there was no better way to make an impact on a company than putting the right pieces in the right places. Heading toward a career in hiring and recruiting wasn’t where I *wanted* to go, but I realized how it could help me get to where I did. I realized it could be leveraged.

In my case the point of leverage was clear: as a non-technical founder, I wanted to be the best team builder on earth. I learned through failure that building the best possible team is the ultimate competitive advantage. It’s much more important than your plan, strategy or ideas.

Take any NFL football team for example: if they had the world’s best playbook (plan) but their roster was filled with average players (people), how good would they be?

It all comes down to the people and I wanted this to be my specialty; the irreplaceable value that I’d bring to the table as a founder. Getting good at identifying, recruiting and hiring the right people suddenly has tremendous value to my career.

How does this relate to you?

If you’re currently in a job or on a path that doesn’t seem to be getting you closer to the career you imagined, you have to figure out a way to leverage the experience and skills you’re getting and then use that as your competitive advantage.

As I recently told a friend (a great QA engineer who’s contemplating a new direction):

Building a foundation in QA can set you up to provide a very unique kind of value, regardless of what type of role you move into. You have a QA perspective you can apply to certain problems that others can’t, and this is what makes you unique and valuable. This may be the exact unicorn skill-set some companies are looking for.

We have to recognize that an engineer isn’t an engineer, a sales rep isn’t a sales rep, a founder isn’t a founder. Every single person is unique and so is the value and perspective they bring to the table. Just as I’m working to position myself as a founder with hiring and recruiting deep in my blood, you can (and should!) position yourself as an engineer (or sales rep, or founder, etc) with a unique background and set of experiences in your blood.

This is something you can and should leverage throughout your career.

Last week was my last at Google. I spent the past weekend reflecting on my time there with good friends at a small music festival in Mendocino, a gorgeous town in Northern California. The truth is, when I joined Google in october of 2013, I didn’t plan to stay more than 6 months. Google was a stepping stone for me — something I needed to see in my life in order to get where I wanted to go.

When I was in middle school, my mom would take me to Walmart each week to buy candy. I’d put 50 airheads and a slip of paper in a gallon ziplock bag and I’d walk to the bus stop to catch the school bus like all the other kids. But once I got on the bus I’d have a line of kids waiting for me, and I’d take out the bag of airheads and sell them for $.25c each. I’d do the same on the ride home. When I got home, I’d sit on the floor in my room and count my quarters — usually 4 or 5 times. This was my favorite part. Oh, the slip of paper was for IOU’s. I’d then go buy more candy with the money I had and put the rest away to save. I’d continue to find ways to provide people with value in exchange for money throughout the rest of my years in school and well beyond. Remember when selling burned CD’s was a thing? Yeah.

I’d enter college as a biology major with the ambition of becoming a doctor. But ‘being a doctor’ in my head went something like this: I‘d graduate med school, hire a bunch of other doctors and build what I envisioned to be a large, elaborate hospitable system. We’d create a ton of jobs, help a lot of people and make a lot of money doing it. That’s the short of it. About 6 months into my freshman year I learned of the word ‘entrepreneurship’ and everything changed.

Here I’d have one of the biggest revelations of my life to date: I had no interest in being a doctor. I wanted to build businesses. I was born to build businesses. Of course, building a successful, meaningful business is another story entirely. I'm working on that. 

I’d complete college with a Degree in Marketing, a minor in Computer Science and a certificate in Entrepreneurship. I’d start 3 different companies while in college, all utter financial failures but epic successes on every other level. The latest company of the three, Wordio, would take a toll on me. I’d experience the challenges of building a team, relying on investors’ money to survive, firing friends and divorcing a cofounder. I’d wholeheartedly question whether I was born to build businesses or if I was mistaken. But I knew I’d fail again in the future when even more was at stake. I knew I could make the world a better place. I wanted to create. I wanted to build the future. Once you find your purpose, failing 10 more times doesn’t seem to bother you. If that’s what it takes to succeed, then on with the show.

At this point I was knee-deep in the software/technology space and I wasn’t going anywhere. I was obsessed. But I began to question whether there was a smarter, more efficient way to learn than building and failing, building and failing. And although it was hard to swallow, I decided I needed to insert myself into someone else’s system, someone else’s business — one which was succeeding — to intimately understand how it worked.

I’d eventually join Josh Greenberg, Co-founder and CTO of Grooveshark and one of our advisors to Wordio, to lead talent acquisition and growth for Grooveshark.com. I'll forever be indebted to Josh for giving me the opportunity. I’d end up seeing Grooveshark grow beyond 120 employees, become profitable, hire, fire, manage, lead and get sued for $17,000,000,000. Seventeen. Billion. Dollars. It was exhilarating and so fast paced that I was able to stomach 2 years of building someone else’s vision instead of mine. I knew this would make me a better entrepreneur in the long run.

I joined Google for this exact reason. I wanted to become a better entrepreneur. How can you build a world-changing company if you’ve never seen what one looks like from the inside? How it behaves… how it operates… how it thinks?

I joined Google to understand these things — to develop a perspective that ranged from a 0-10 person team at Wordio to over 100 at Grooveshark to 40,000 at Google. I wanted the full cross-section. I knew fitting in at Google would be a challenge but I needed to see it. I needed to understand it. And it was an enlightening experience. After just 9 months, I now think a little differently. And that will last me a lifetime.

Here are some things I came to Google to see — my ‘checklist’ of sorts. Once I felt I had these down, any more time spent would have diminishing returns. Besides, serendipity struck right about the time I crossed the very last item off the list:

1) Data

No decision is made at Google based on opinion or gut feeling. This holds true all the way up the food chain. Anyone, regardless of seniority, can get sign-off on a project if there’s data to support it. This eliminates a lot of bureaucracy found in comparatively large companies. I now have some of Google’s data-driven DNA and I’m thankful for that. However, when building a company from ground zero there are countless instances where you have to rely on your instinct. Finding the balance is key.

2) Leadership and management

Once a company gets to a certain size (measured by employee count), the leadership influence you get exposed to is directly correlated with the leadership abilities of those you report to. Being closer to the bottom of the org chart than the top, I didn’t see great leadership up close but I did see it from afar. The line between leadership and management becomes blurred in large companies. Also, I now understand why middle-level management gets such a bad rap. Seeing it from the trenches will help me avoid it in the future.

3) The science of hiring

With a background in technical recruiting and hiring, I was very anxious to learn the science behind Google’s hiring process. Once the curtain was lifted though, I was surprised to learn there simply wasn’t much of it. Google has many of the same problems hiring as many other companies, the problems just happen to be larger since Google hires at enormous scale. This was enlightening to me as I'm very interested in attacking some of the problems in the hiring/recruiting space in the future.

4) Process and structure

When building a startup from ground up, process and structure can be toxic — even deadly. But once there’s a certain number of moving parts, a bit of process and structure becomes integral. I hadn’t seen or understood what this looks like. Grooveshark was the biggest company I had ever worked for and at best we were an organized mess. All startups are. Seeing how a company like Google keeps things in order was fascinating. I now know what process and structure looks like and how to determine when it's needed.

5) Communication and negotiation

The only time problems ever arise is when there is a lack of communication. There's truly no such thing as over communicating. Communicating within a large organization is especially tough because (usually) the more people you know and work with, the less you know each one. This means making the extra effort to make sure you’re on the same page with the people you’re communicating with. As part of Google’s negotiation training, I was introduced to one of my late favorite books, Getting More. It may seem obvious, but life is one continuous negotiation. Whether you’re trying to get a lunch meeting with someone you can learn from or trying to get your kids to clean their room, you’re always negotiating. It's the way you communicate that determines the outcomes of these negotiations.

6) Network

I jokingly told many of my friends the reason I was joining Google was to become an ex-Googler. That was partly true. One of the reasons for this is pedigree. And along with the pedigree you gain access to ~40,000 incredibly smart people. People with whom you build relationships that will last much longer than your tenure at the company. This was my main goal when I joined the company - I went banging down plenty of doors. I made sure to build relationships that will carry with me into the future as I begin my next entrepreneurial journey. 

I gained a lot in my time at Google and I’m incredibly grateful for the opportunity to spend time with each and every person I met along the way. A couple months ago the stars began to align for me and I knew it was time for my next journey. The truth is though, that it’s scary for me. It’s been 3 years since I've worked full time on my own company and the unknown brings fear. Google was a place my friends and family were proud I was at, where there was no risk and plenty of financial security. There were many types of pressure, social definitely being one of them. But the only thing that will guarantee myself failure is to not try.

1. Life is a marathon, not a sprint

Growing up, it was so easy to get lost doing the things I knew other people would approve of. This is human nature. I’ve realized that the hardest things to do in life are the ones that are best for you in the long run rather than the ones that are easily accepted in the short run. It’s too easy to get caught up in doing what society wants from you — it’s a lot harder to overcome this and accomplish what you want for you. If you can truly accept this and put it fully into practice, you can accomplish anything.

2. Success = sacrifice

There are so many things I want to do in life — but there’s such a short amount of time to do them. This is sad and beautiful at the same time because it makes me prioritize the things in life that really matter to me. If you really want to accomplish something big, you have to sacrifice a lot of the things you want just a little. This is a reality of life. The quicker we’re able to accept the realities of life, the quicker we’re able to navigate them and begin to use them to our advantage. It’s not easy to put aside things like entertainment, sports, leisure. I work hard to sacrifice these things because I know they won’t help me achieve my goals. Sometimes the smallest sacrifices have the biggest impact.

3. Never chase the money

I’ve learned over the last few years that chasing the money always leads me away from happiness. I always thought that money would make me happy because that’s what society led me to believe. As you get closer to having the money you want, you realize that you’re often farther away from accomplishing your real goals (which for me is impacting a lot of people). Accomplishing our real goals is what leads us to true happiness. The most financially successful people I know have one consistent thing in common — none of them ever chased the money. They chased what they loved and the money they earned was the side effect of being really great at that one thing. I think everyone begins to understand this more as they age. I’m working to understand this the best I can now so I have more time to be happy and enjoy my life.

4. You are who you hang out with

I heard this quote years ago and it stuck:

“If you’re the smartest one in the room, you’re in the wrong room.”

I never thought I was the smartest one in the room but this made me realize I need to make an effort to surround myself with people who are much smarter than me. I slowly started gravitating towards the people and situations I knew I can learn from. It was really hard to accept that I was mostly powerless in these situations, acting as a sponge rather than a firehose. But slowly I realized how much this helped me grow. To this day I strive to surround myself with only the people I can learn from — even if it’s one little thing. This is the only way I know how to grow.

5. Focus less on accomplishments, focus more on you

After lots of resistance and hesitation I had a revelation. The only common denominator across all of life’s situations is me — myself. I am the one thing that every event in my life will have in common. Therefore, I need to work on bettering myself in order to better the outcome of future events. I’ve always been goal oriented and accomplishments focused, but the realization here is that by working on myself and making myself a better person each day, I will accomplish much more in the end.