Thoughts in Time

A couple weeks ago I posted about hanging out briefly with Keith Ferrazzi. Afterwards I wrote a thank you note to Keith expressing how the philosophy espoused in Never Eat Alone has helped changed my life. Keith asked that I share the note through my blog. Here it is

Keith,

Great seeing you last night. Here’s a quick write-up(for your blog) of how my attitude and life has changed since we first met last year at the Yale Business and Leadership conference. I can’t say thank you enough…

Miles Lasater, Mark Volchek, and I founded Higher One when I was a sophomore at Yale. With the help of many others we were able to survive the dot - com bust, raise money, and today have a profitable business that is growing quickly. Most people who I talk to about what we’ve been able to accomplish will make a comment such as “wow - you’re so lucky, when you graduated you didn’t even have to interview for a job…” The truth is although I’ve always been excited about having an entrepreneurial career, it was also very scary. My friends who were going on to law school and law careers, or going to McKinsey, or heading into the investment banking world all seemed to have a clear career path, while I always had this nagging fear about what I would do after Higher One. For an entrepreneur, there’s no clear career path. At the Yale event, you had us do an exercise where we shared something that we were concerned about with the person sitting next to us. I shared this fear and we talked about it briefly. As you presented, one part of your presentation made a huge impression on me, and has very much helped me become comfortable with myself and my future. You talked about how today, one could have a “relationship driven career.” As an entrepreneur all of one’s success is built off of relationships. Since last summer, I have felt refreshed and comfortable in my path in life — confident that the relationships I am building will enable me to accomplish any goal that I set. After finishing Never Eat Alone (I read it cover to cover the week after the YBL event) I have tried to apply as many of the principles you outlined as possible. I have become a constant connector of people, host a monthly luncheon for innovative people (called the New Haven Innovation Cell), and do not let anything get in the way in my interest to meet and truly get to know and help other people. Understanding that a relationship driven career is not just possible, but a way to thrive has made a huge difference in my life. You and your career are a living example and having you as a role model is invaluable. Thank you.

Best,

Sean

Keith recently posted some other thoughts I sent to him. Read it here - http://nevereatalone.typepad.com/blog/2006/03/gratitudes.html - or read the Never Eat Alone blog at http://nevereatalone.typepad.com.

I’m driving down route 1between Marathon and Key West (ok - I’m not driving, my father is)… I can’t wait to have a week in Key West to relax, think, and read the half dozen books I brought with me. Kellee bet me that I couldn’t read everything I bought… We’ll see. I’m using a verizon wireless broadband access card to get online. It’s amazing. Here I am, being driven to the southern most point in the US, and connecting to the net at a couple megabytes per second… Now I’ll never escape my email. I guess the next trip I’ll have to somewhere where I can only get online with a satellite connection.

Had this idea a while ago, but didn’t have a chance to write it down. During the holidays, millions of dollars of company money is spent on gifts and cards for clients. The truth is, do we really enjoy those candies, cards, nuts, etc? I personally would feel a lot better about a vendor if they asked me if I’d like them to rather take the budget they allotted to giving me stuff around December and rather made a donation to a charity that I or my company endorsed. Or don’t even ask me. Just let our company know that you’ve donated $150 to the Red Cross in our name. I understand that there are sites out there where you can buy cards from charity organizations, but all those cards are just more environmental waste - even if they’re recycled or created from recycled material, there is still energy used to create to do the recycling. I wonder if there would be an easy way to let companies sign up to let their vendors know that a gift to a charity would be the best gift during the holiday season.

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I had a conversation the other day with a reporter who was interested in why many startup companies get their legs by partnering with companies that many might see as being their competitor. Take Higher One as an example. Fundamentally, we’re competing with banks, yet we offer our service through a partnership with a bank. In some cases, the answer is that the startup has developed a new technology and this provides a barrier to entry for the large potential competitor. More often, I think that there exist cultural barriers to entry that prevent a larger firm from entering a market to compete with a startup. Internal organizational issues may make it close to impossible to pull together the group necessary to build something that competes with something developed by a much smaller group of people that have less management overhead. If you’re interested in this idea, I would recommend reading Clayton Christensen’s books - The Innovator’s Dilemma (HarperBusiness Essentials) and The Innovator’s Solution: Creating and Sustaining Successful Growth. Although Christensen doesn’t specifically refer to the problem as “cultural barriers to entry” he does identify organizational obstacles as a primary reason why DEC, the large steel companies, etc. were not able to move quickly enough to keep their business being destroyed by disruptive technologies. In The Innovator’s Solution, he suggests that large companies create organizations outside the traditional org. structure to work on disruptive technologies. I think that although an interesting idea, I think that it is almost impossible to separate a group from the company culture unless all of the employees are new… and the fact that they are employees rather than “founding employees” makes this cultural barrier very difficult to overcome.

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I had the opportunity to hang out a bit with Keith Ferazzi this evening. Keith wrote Never Eat Alone, a New York Times bestseller, and a book that I highly recommend. I first became familiar with Keith’s ideas (and met him) last year at the Yale Business Leadership conference. At the time, I was not feeling entirely comfortable with the fact that I wasn’t sure how being an entrepreneur led to a true career. One thing Keith said that sticks with me today, and has helped me find a comfort level with who I am was that today, more so than ever it is possible to have a relationship driven career. More important than domain expertise, building great relationships with people ultimately enables one’s career. It’s a little intimidating at first to think that one’s success with regards to a career rests on the relationships we build with others, but it’s certainly true… and really this sort of career can be more satisfying when one thinks about the fact that having success through a relationship driven career rests on helping other people be succesful. Anyways, if you haven’t read Keith’s book, go get it, and if you have the chance to hear him speak definitely take the opportunity. It can have profound affects on your approach to business, relationships, and life.

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