Notes From Start-Up Land

Some might feel exiled. I feel free.

I never in my life wanted to start my own business. I never wanted to be a founder. Or an entrepreneur. I liked working in an established company. I liked the structure and support. I also liked the stability.

When I first graduated from college I worked as a production assistant on a feature film and a bunch of commercials. I hated the instability. The not knowing when or if my next job would come. Every time one job was wrapping, I was convinced I’d never get another. It made me constantly anxious. I didn’t like the hustle. Hustle is not my jam. Or wasn’t, when I was 22. Which is when you should like the hustle, I think.

I ended up taking a job at an ad agency making $16k/year with benefits. And free pizza on nights when we worked late. That worked for me. And that — with better pay and benefits — kept working for me, until just a few years ago.

For me, the appeal was never that in a big company I could hide or get away with not doing much. I’m never looking for the easy way out. I don’t want to laze about. I love to work. It soothes me. Whatever the work. The drudgery of spread sheets or the high-falutin “strategic thinking” of 10-year-plans! I like it all!

Some people definitely get away with doing a lot of nothing in a large company. For some people “quiet quitting” is just a way of life. Do as little as possible, just don’t get caught doing nothing.

Or:

Sound smart, don’t commit. Don’t make a decision because if you make the wrong one you’ll have to own up to it! Just keep pondering, ask for more analysis. Always more analysis. Hide whenever possible.

This is an effective mode of survival in a large corporation.

Not me. I’ve always outworked everyone. It’s my way. Just work harder. And I go faster. I can be very efficient in how I get work done. I’m never the best or the smartest or the most “talented” (whatever that means) but I can pretty much work harder, longer and faster (on a given project) than anyone.

It’s how I do everything. It’s how I write books (I wrote both of my books in about 3 months each). Make movies. Climb the ladder. (Ladder-climbing was slow, not fast, but I kept going. And going.) Survive a cancellation. I just keep going. One foot in front of the other. One page at a time. One step at a time. One step forward two steps back. But somehow maintaining forward momentum. Always.

I can do the grind and out-endure. I’ve always done this, since I was a kid. I can be tired. I get up and keep going. I can be sad. I just get up and keep going. I can be in pain. I just get up and keep going. What else would you do? Sit about feeling tired, sad and in pain? No thanks.

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When I was leading the Levi’s Brand one of my direct reports advised me to use the timer for emails, set it so that they auto-send early, but during work hours, instead of late at night when I might be thinking about something and jot off a quick note. I rejected this advice. 1) I led a global business. It was always the middle of the night for someone when I provided guidance/direction/thoughts on a matter. 2) You don’t have to answer just because I’m sending it. I don’t expect you to.

I work when I work. You work when you work. It will work out as long as we’re all actually working.

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It’s become a bit of a joke for me to say: Nothing will ever be as hard as working out for 7 hours a day, on 300 calories and a broken ankle! Ha ha! But it’s true, even if a tad flip. Everything after that gymnast’s childhood is child’s play. As long as I can eat, not get weighed in and shamed for my number on the scale, not be publicly humiliated on a regular basis and not be physically exhausted and in pain . . . I’m good. I got this. I keep going.

I was pretty good at standing out and delivering great work within the system. I’m always able to find my way in those situations. In college, I wasn’t the most academically-minded student. Definitely not the most curious. But I figured out how to write papers that got A’s or A-’s. I could do it quickly and efficiently. I’m good at figuring systems out. That and endurance/perseverance. Those are my strengths, I think. It’s good to know your strengths and lean into them. I’m a workhorse. That’s where I excel.

But I don’t want to do it for someone else anymore or a panel of someone elses.

I want to build something, not tinker with something already in existence. My sweat. My product. My company. My upside. My downside. My win. My failure.

I don’t need the prestige or “clout” of making [insert business publication here] Best CMO List. I don’t need the box seats in a fancy stadium named after the brand that I lead. I never really needed that, I just got it as part of the deal. I don’t like football but I watched 49er’s games at Levi’s Stadium for many years. It was fun(ish). But the seats were mostly wasted on me as a person who doesn’t enjoy football. I gave them to friends sometimes and they had fun. It was nice to be able to do that for folks. The concerts were enjoyable. Taylor Swift, Rolling Stones, Grateful Dead, Jay-Z, U2 and on and on. But I don’t need it. Didn’t need it.

I have a strong sense of myself without a title and without the accoutrements of success.

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In my two years since resigning from Levi’s, I consulted and interviewed. I also wrote a book and made the better part of a documentary film. My “break” wasn’t much of a break, really. I like to work.

The consulting was mostly with smaller companies. Less mature. Though some were very well developed. In the several hundreds of millions of dollars. But the interviewing was with big companies. Billions in revenue.

And I hated it. The interview process, I mean. The grilling. The testing on whether I could say the right things, tout the right ideas. Apologize for my sins. I was asked: Are you sorry for your actions? No, I said without hesitation.

I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t restrict myself. I couldn’t be prodded and scripted by HR and Communications and Legal. I’m too old and too opinionated and frankly, too capable, for that.

Some of the entrepreneurs I worked with were nutty. So committed to their idea in a charming but also sometimes disconnected from reality kind of way. So passionate. So freewheeling. Often weird.

I figured, I can do that. I’m weird. I’m passionate. I’m capable. And, as a bonus, I’m not disconnected from reality.

And so here I am, at 55-years-old, starting my own company. It’s a baby brand. We’re about 7 weeks old. Teeny tiny. There aren’t even enough employees to fill two hands worth of fingers. There are no tickets to football games or even fancy dinners. We’re on a budget.

And I will tell you, my best day here in my tiny little start up is better than my best day in the big machine by a thousand fold. And I’m guessing my worst day will be way worse than my worst day in any of the large companies that employed me (Foote Cone & Belding now called FCB, Gap Inc, Levi’s). Because I feel responsible. For the success of the brand, and for the people who have agreed to join me on this journey, risking their own reputations to be associated with me.

I feel like I would carry this thing on my back and drag it across a finish line if I needed to, proverbially speaking. When I was a kid I watched these weird races on ABC’s Wide World of Sports — I don’t remember what they were called and I can’t find reference to it on the google — where these large men carried refrigerators in races. I feel like that.

Every tiny detail makes up a brand and I will involve myself in every one until we make it clear who we are. And get this going.

We will not have an HR department for as long as I can help it. We will work with recruiters when we have open roles. We’ll figure out benefits when we need to. But I will not have a department full of non-revenue generating, non-brand building bureaucrats making us all take courses on what we can and cannot say. Nope. Not going to do it. If we’re successful, at some point someone will tell me I need to have a head of HR. And I will resist.

At some point we’ll have to bring in Corporate Communications. For now, all of the words I say are written by me. Conjured by me. I stand behind all of them. It will be too much at some point and I’ll need help. But for now, I’m happy to speak for myself. I’ve got amazing help and a brand PR team but they know I say and write pretty much what I want to. As it should be.

I have partners. I don’t decide everything. I have a team. We all work together. We all care the same amount which is a lot.

Can I do it? Who knows. I have the grit and the discipline. I have the energy and expertise. I have an amazing group of people doing it with me. But starting something is hard. Lots of great people fail.

Maybe I will. Maybe I won’t.

Whatever happens it will be on me.