Course Correcting in Year Two of the next Chapter
Most exited founders I spoke with have talked about taking a year off to recharge and get separation from the thing they were doing. I’ve been advised to do everything from extensive travel to silent meditation retreats to help “find myself”. In classic Bill fashion I shunned all of that and dove back into the water with my new thing The Second Foundation my family office. It’s been a wonderful year of learning about both myself and what I want from this next chapter. I think the biggest learnings have been that I need to make sure to take more time for myself and that I am not scalable as a singular resource. From these learnings I have begun to make some course corrections in Year Two.
I am putting way more effort/time towards the personal over the professional. 60% of available time will be applied towards personal efforts/goals this year over professional obligations. The remaining 40% will be split 20% towards team and professional obligations (boards and speaking); 10% deepening existing ties with “my Tribe”; 5% towards serendipitous connections and the remaining 5% on external requests.
This all sounds very aspirational but I’ve already begun to change my habits to align with the above. Some of these new habits may be of use to you but even if not you will have a sense of how I am operating going forward.
Emails- I am limiting myself to doing roughly 20–30 emails per day. A friend of mine recently turned me on to the notion that the more email you send out the more you get back. It’s a never ending game of Pong. One way to limit email is to limit the outbound flow rate which is very much the opposite of what I did in the past. This does mean it will take longer for me to respond to many emails depending on what is sitting in the queue but I’ve learned that this is okay. It also helps to train the world around the notion that I am no longer instantly available.
Fitness/LinkedIn united- I’m using my cycling sessions to respond to LinkedIn requests and information digesting. I am finding this to be a great way to make a series of 20 min aerobic sessions go past faster. it also allows for me to not feel guilty about not responding to those LI requests immediately as I did in the past. So far this is working well.
My Mornings are Mine- I’ve reclaimed my mornings for my personal use. This means no professional meetings in mornings four days per week before 1030a. More importantly this means less coffee and muffins being ingested which helps with that whole health thing. It also means I dont feel rushed to get out the door at 730 or 8a….I’ll still do walking sessions with people in the a.m. but generally these will be personal focused meetings versus professional.
Tribal Music-I’m spending more time with people who are “My Tribe”. These are interactions with people who share my objectives but have no agendas. I have learned this past year that spending time with people who I can share a free flow of information with and test drive ideas with is something that gives me great pleasure. These people are all over the country/globe but I have the means and resources to get to them as long as I am willing to spend the TIME to do it. This has been one of my biggest learnings this past year I’d say- Spend more time with people I enjoy and who enjoy me versus seeing me as a source of anything.
The Lunch- We created a program that we call the Lunch where we invite people to the office for lunch with the team. We take 90 minutes to talk and share. From that 90 minutes it gives us all a chance to interact and determine whether further interaction is something worth pursuing. I’ve enjoyed each of these sessions and look forward to continuing those. It’s a great way to meet new people in a scalable format for me.
Serendipitous Events- I’m attending and speaking at local/regional events. This is purposeful to allow myself to remain exposed to the broader community and meet people I might not normally meet. I have also been using this as a litmus test for people who want to engage with me 1:1. if you are a founder and are not engaging in the local community efforts then I am going to question your commitment to learning from others. A great example of this is the upcoming Business of Software conference in October. If you are a founder attempting to grow a technology company in this region, you should go to BoS. You will meet tons of other people on their similar journeys in a no judgement zone. It’s great. Way better than a 1:1 engagement with me I promise you.
So that’s my update and report. Thanks to those who are helping me to refine and course correct the ship this year. Learning who I am and who I want to be post GDC has been an effort but it has been worth the stress needed to produce the new and more interesting Bill Spruill. RIP Thanos. Welcome Kang.
