For starters, here’s why not to start a business, ª 1) In my spare time, I’d like to¼ ; 2) Let’s call a couple friends to¼ ; 3) It won’t cost more than¼ ºIn my limited experiences, I’ve learned more about starting a business from my relationship with my kids than from any book or conversation I’ve ever had. ª So guys, what do you want to do today?º It’s amazing what you’ll learn about what a customer wants when you do the listening in the relationship.
Having served many different clients over my professional career in Miami, Chicago, London and New York City ranging from global buyout firms to strategic corporate types, I was always left short of an opportunity to develop a meaningful relationship.
Prior to moving to Gainesville and seven years before starting Shadow Health, I tried to capture this sentiment in what I believed would become my next work environment. I guess dreams come true if you’re willing to wait for the right relationship:
If ever I was thankful, it would reveal a work environment where learning is perpetual:
Where creativity is contagious and resourcefulness is instilled and reproduced;
Where an academic culture inevitably cross-pollinates with corporate reality; Where original thought is harnessed and essential to the constituencies of the work day.
If ever I was thankful, it would reflect cultivated relationships that transcend the work:
Relationships that began with explanations of each individual’s personal journey to the present; And continued through the daily uncertainties of funding, product development and sales;
Consequently, a relationship ripens into the intentional mutual reliance upon one another.
If ever I was thankful, it would expose a revolutionary product and a supportive technical service:
A product that licenses more quality time to be spent with the people you love the most;
A product that proliferates the life expectancy of the young in our global neighborhood;
A product that systematically polices and disarms the otherwise undetected network pickpocket.
If ever I was thankful, it may suggest a mushroomed practice of corporate morality:
Where the employee handbook policies are written on the hearts of the individuals;
Where corporate ethics are exercised proactively rather than retrospectively;
Where individual virtue is incessantly visible and corporate indulgence is aggressively absent.
If ever I was thankful, I would enfold myself with individuals who broadened life’s bandwidth:
Who I could learn a great deal from incidentally while discussing a novel issue;
Who I would decisively call at home to discuss a questionable solution to an earlier problem;
A person who I regard as a friend and who happens to be a colleague as well.
If ever I was thankful, I would pursue a work relationship even if it meant illogically working for free:
A product that would retrieve and exploit the dormant adolescent innocence of my childhood;
A place where I enthusiastically go to learn something new about myself and humanity everyday;
A place where financial compensation is a misnomer for distinction and excellence; and
A place where true value is measured by what you qualitatively give rather than what you quantitatively receive.