When I decided to leave the Mother Nest of Facebook this year, I remember asking myself what my ‘Word For The Year’ would be. What’s the word that’ll be at the forefront of my mind as I began exploring this new venture? What’s the word that I can craft a story around that can inspire others? How harmless of an exercise can this be?

Well, the word I chose was Uncomfortable.

And man, let me tell you how true that has been…and we’re only 6 months into the year!

Between figuring out legal, tax, tooling, how to find new clientele, negotiating contracts and just tackling new roles I haven’t done before (hello imposter syndrome!), there was this thing called COVID-19 that came up right as things were starting to flow that’s left millions of people unemployed and transforming the economy for the foreseeable future.

People have been telling me how terrible a timing starting this recruiting consultancy must have been and hey, they’re right in many regards. However, I wasn’t completely shocked. After all, I did ask for an opportunity to get Uncomfortable and I did set my expectation that it wasn’t going to be easy. I just didn’t think that those words would have rung so true, so soon and in such a dramatic way.

With all that said, I’m grateful for how this pandemic has expedited and sharpened some of the lessons that I was going to eventually learn anyways. Here are a few things that have been on my mind.

Battle of the Mind

Thoughts are a powerful thing. In my early 20’s, I remember being so enamored about the idea of having a profitable Side Hustle that I bought a couple of e-courses that promised a path to my first passive 1k/month business. Although 95% of those teachings were a total waste of money, what I did remember was how much each guru emphasized the importance of having a strong mindset before doing anything else. Ironically enough, those lessons were always the ones I skipped because I just wanted to blueprint! Show me the money! Maybe these guys were onto something about the importance of winning the battle of the mind first before any other battles are fought on the ‘field’.

Napolean Hill, author of the famously quoted book, ‘Think and Grow Rich” gave a few pointers on what having a strong mindset specifically meant. In his words, thinking breaks down into a mixture of taking initiative, faith, willingness to win, and resilience. He also emphasized the importance of having a clear and focused goal about what you want to achieve.

As I reflect on this past year, I’ve found how much easier it has been for Imposter Syndrome thoughts to creep in than to make the conscious decision to fight them.

Thoughts like:

“Oh, you’re not good enough for this. You’re a one-trick pony. Who do you think you are thinking you can succeed as a solo consultant?

Your recruiting background is a total facade hiding the insecurities you have about your talents. Those brand names don’t mean squat! Welcome to the ‘real’ world.

You are completely screwed in this economy! Recruiting in the middle of one of the highest unemployment rates in US history is going to be impossible!

You are such a wuss when you’re on the phone negotiating contracts. Just quit. Go back to a 9–5 job where you don’t have to deal with this on a quarterly basis. Don’t you want a stable contract?

Our minds are incredibly imaginative and can serve us for the good or the bad. These thoughts just slip in, almost like a breath of mist that appears for a brief moment then evaporates the next. It’s a daily, sometimes hourly decision where these opportunities to resist come up and it’s in those micro-decisions where I get to adopt a new mentality and declare the truth about who I am, whose I am and what I was called to do that gradually builds up a fortified wall.

I’m grateful for the resistance. Without it, I wouldn’t be able to build the foundations I need to support me in the challenging (and uncomfortable!) years ahead in this journey.

So bring on the thoughts! I’m ready for you.

Your Network Is Your Life & Blood

My business would be dead if I hadn’t gotten the generous referrals and advice from the good people in my network.

When I had made the decision that I was going to leave Facebook to start this consultancy, I was so fortunate to have been able to connect with around 5, maybe 6 people who had started a similar business. They were so open in sharing the warning signs around how to structure my business, lessons that they learned, and perhaps most importantly, just giving me the confidence that I’m going to do great. Self-doubt is a real thing at the beginning of any venture but those attitudes do change when you’re able to hear, see, and get encouraged by people who’ve walked in your shoes before.

Wow, so this is possible…That’s how much you make?! Structuring my contract related to the value I provide…interesting…Your worst-case scenario seems manageable…Ah, so this is what I can expect between getting my foot in the door here…I should start as an LLC and file as S-Corp? That’s a good idea I hadn’t thought of before.

There’s something powerful when seasoned vets can illuminate the mystery behind the closed door. It’s still a mystery but it’s just a little less scary.

On the clientele side, I was super fortunate to have gotten a few referrals my way from people I’ve worked within the past and from a VC that I sent an email too. To understand how monumental getting these referrals have been, it may be helpful to share the context behind the business development side. To date, I’ve reached out to 80 startup Founders/CEOs, CTOs, COOs, Head of Talents, and 13 or so of the top VC’s in the Bay that invests in the hardware/robotics domain that I recruit for. I had gotten responses from the startups but not a single one needed my services. Same deal with the VC’s except for the 1 that gave me a game-changing lead to my first ever client.

If I hadn’t worked at my past agency and maintained relationships with some of my past colleagues there, I honestly don’t know where I’d be as a business today. Your network is everything. Plant seeds, develop them, and show that you can deliver good enough work to be trusted with a solid reference.

So, thank you, friends, you know who you are.

No One Is Going To Decide For You

This one was pretty straight-forward. In general, I’m a pretty indecisive guy and I know it’s something I need to consciously work on. Just ask my wife every time she asks me what I want to do for dinner or figuring where I want to stay when we plan a vacation. Maybe it’s the hyper-analytical side of me that just needs to consider all options and go through my cost-benefit analysis of every situation. It’s exhaustive and perhaps more often than not, leads to analysis paralysis.

This was and is something I’m still finding the confidence to do better in. Throughout this year, I’ve found myself sometimes asking friends and mentors for advice almost with the expectation that they decide for me. If I had to be brutally honest in asking myself why I do that it’s probably because I didn’t want to own up to the consequences whether they’re good or bad. I hate losing. I hate failing and it’s just an easier route to blame someone or something else for giving me bad advice or not giving me enough to weigh and consider.

However, that’s cowardly and not how I want to evolve as a business leader. There’s work to be done here and as I gain more experiences through the rest of this year and seeing both the victories and failures behind the decisions I own, I can course correct, learn and do better. What I can find courage in isn’t the result of the decision but the fact that I made a decision on my own and am ready to own up to it.

Perhaps Jocko Willink in his book, “Extreme Ownership” said it best:

“On any team, in any organization, all responsibility for success and failure rests with the leader. The leader must own everything in his or her world. There is no one else to blame. The leader must acknowledge mistakes and admit failures, take ownership of them, and develop a plan to win.”

Control What You Can

Like many other businesses, things seemed to have changed almost overnight when COVID-19 hit. For Vessel Talent, the changes came suddenly and decisively. I was working with two clients at the time, one with another agency and one with an early Series A startup. First, the agency went out of business with almost no warning and had to lay off their entire staff. No partnerships, no business. *POOF* there goes that contract. The other client was mercifully more gradual. I had been going on-site three times a week to break up the WFH loneliness (ohhh the irony) so the first change came when the shelter-in-place ordinances were put to place. Goodbye friends. Shortly after, massive layoffs from numerous high-profile and well-backed startups started to happen and to no surprise, the client decided to slow down their hiring plans and re-prioritize. *POOF* there goes that contract as well.

I share that not to complain or come across ungrateful. This was the route I chose after all and there was always going to be inherent risk in leaving the Mother Nest. However, what I learned in those chaotic few weeks was that it was so much more about how we respond and adapt than what actually happens to you.

Contracts are ending and getting adjusted? Great, what an opportunity it is to start networking again. Maybe I can take advantage of what I am being offered, exit gracefully and ask for referrals to get the ball rolling, Maybe I can restructure my contract and see if I can provide value differently.

We only get so much time and energy each day so why not invest it in the areas that will get you that most return? Worrying and complaining is a bad investment. It feeds negativity into more negativity and ultimately causes inaction. Taking action, providing value, and making decisions is a great investment. It provokes the status quo and forces the tiniest of ripples to happen and hopefully lead to something bigger.

Take Care Of Your Body And Your Body Will Take Care Of You.

Go to sleep early. Wake up early. Work Out. Meditate. Pray. Cold Shower. Eat your veggies. Delete your Gmail over the weekend and unplug.

Anything else to add? Nope, just do it. It’s a worthy investment every single time.

Take Action Consistently, Aggressively, Intelligently

Ryan Serhant is one of New York City’s top real estate agent, Youtuber, and author. He’s also a salesman and business owner who started his career in 2008 during our last financial crisis. Sound familiar? One quick highlight from his book, “Sell It Like Serhant” which I thought was worth sharing.

“The secret to your success will be revealed in hindsight. You won’t recognize it until you’ve already lived it.”

Ryan talks a lot about being surrounded by opportunity and having lots of balls in the air. New contacts, getting referrals, generating new business, and always reaching for new balls. As a newbie to this game especially during COVID-19 economy, I know I’m far from having that many balls in the air. It feels more like having one or two balls in the air right now but hey it’s a start. I have an opportunity to do killer work with what I do have on my plate and remember that this is a long game. Action and attitude. Bring that to the table as much as you can every day and every hour that you’re working. Stay humble and remember your roots.

The Venture Capital world is all about referrals. You need an ‘in’ to get into that exclusive network and to get that ‘in’ you need to deliver. Simple as that. It can be easy to lose focus on the present and get greedy chasing after short monetary awards but as Ryan said, success isn’t viewed in the near term, it’s in the hindsight.

What an incredible story this could be a few years from now if I’m able to actually deliver to clients in this pandemic economy. If I can deliver in this harsh environment, how much more effective can I when we’re in bulling away again?

Permission To Dream

My pastor is a big fan of having a vision and writing it down. He had the vision to move to Silicon Valley from Australia to start a church where there just wasn’t a lot of church going on. Fast forward a few years later, they went from a living room to now planting 10 campuses all across the world and bringing the beautiful truth of the Gospel and the sweet love of Jesus Christ to thousands of people around the world. How cool is that?! C’mon! There’s something so powerful about just giving ourselves permission to dream again. We can get so narrow-focused about the next day, next week and next month will look like that we sometimes limit ourselves to the grand possibilities of what could the future could hold. Yes, there is a balance between just dreaming to dream and the practicals of how it’ll happen but the first step is just granting ourselves the permission to dream.

I’m not sure if Vessel Talent would have existed if I didn’t dream as a teenager to own a business one day. Heck, it might not even exist in this crazy pandemic we’re in if I don’t have a vision for what Vessel Talent could look like in 5 years! Having vision brings hope. It brought hope to the high school kid who could not understand a lick of math. It brought hope to the college student who barely gradually graduated. It brought hope to the clueless young professional who felt so inadequate compared to his peers with fancy jobs and fancy job titles.

Yet here we are!

So to wrap up, I’ve learned quite a lot in what’s already felt like a long year. I have no idea what’s to come through the rest of 2020 but all I see ahead of me are opportunities.

Thanks for reading.

A.L.