Inspiration

This city I call home is pretty damn amazing when you think about it. I got home very late on a Friday night, and slept as much as was humanly possible.

It was good to be home. Much as I love Johannesburg, and everything else that’s going through my head, it was nice to show back up at Cape CrossFit. It was nice to see everyone, to get goosebumps at the audio selection, and to snatch alongside Grant. Although his snatch is way prettier than mine.

What was nicer, in a way? To have one of the girls in my gym comment on my Facebook check-in that I was looking super strong and it was inspiring to watch me continue to get stronger.

You know how I said above that you can only inspire people who are paying attention? Well, sometimes, apparently, you can be an inspiration without even knowing it. I had no idea she was paying attention to me like this; I was aware of her getting stronger, but it never occurred to me, really, that I was being watched in my own way.

But seriously, it’s a great feeling to provide any sort of encouragement to women to be strong, when our culture doesn’t necessarily encourage this.

It happened again not once, but twice in the week. One day I was in the gym in the evening doing my rehab, and this girl who has been training for a while, I don’t know her name but she has the heart of a fighter and that is why she will one day be very good, came up to me right after her workout and asked me, all in one breathless question (she’d obviously been waiting all class to come ask): “You know that thing they did in the Games with the one-legged pistol squats with kettlebells? Can YOU do that?” I said I had no idea, but probably: let’s go find out. So we did, and I could. And she left happy. That thing she’d seen on TV, performed by a living, breathing, female that she knew.

And then the next morning I woke up to a great long Facebook email from a friend that said, in part, the following: “Thanks for helping me think a little out the box and for teaching me to not be afraid to do things that night challenge me - like you so often do - probabaly without thinking. I just take a little longer. Boom!”

So, what did I learn? While I may be hard on myself for lacking a sympathy gene, and while I may feel inadequate most of the time because I feel like I’m too self-centred, and especially now where if it’s not CrossFit or Wi-Fi I’m probably not that interested in it (tunnel vision, anyone??), apparently I do have an impact, and on some people it’s a positive one.

While I may or may not have been whining on this blog recently about sometimes the attention [that I do crave, let’s not lie here!] being all a bit too much, and just wanting to crawl under the covers some days and not come out, well life gives you what you need, right? Just because it’s hard doesn’t mean it’s not too much to handle, and we all have our ups and downs.

What I meant to say: I am happy and proud to be a role model of sorts for some people, just as I look up to many role models around me. And for any of us to go whining about how it’s so much pressure to be a role model is just silly. It’s like in certain situations I can see and feel that I have a little bit of star power to me, for whatever mix of reasons. I go certain places and my presence is felt, let’s just put it that way. It’s not important why, but it’s disingenuous to pretend it’s not there. I’m just glad I’m not actually famous.

Back to reality. Training. Then Saturday accounting lunch, and afterwards some errands and what can only be described as a mental vacation. I took a hot bath, relaxed, and was so indecisive I couldn’t even figure out if I wanted to put away my groceries or do laundry first. Mental rest day.

Sunday morning was literally magical. I was meeting my friend Justin for a mountain run. Justin’s an Ironman so it was very nice of him to take it slowly for my deconditioned ass, but as we started out running up Devil’s Peak, a rainbow came out. And it was not a subtle rainbow, it was an across-Table Mountain, full-fledged, cross-the-sky rainbow.

Then we ran up the mountain, and some niggles in my body that I’d been ignoring came out. Time for more mobility.

This city is stunning. The way the mountains frame the city, the way the colour of the sea and the sky complement each other so perfectly. About this time of the winter the depth of the green of the mountain, and the different kinds of fynbos, with the blooming proteas and aloes, and the clouds and sky and even the cold temperatures make you feel spectacularly alive. On the way up we jumped a stream. On the way back we got caught in a squall, and got soaked.

Something that struck me the other day as I was getting off the highway in Johannesburg was that although I obviously am a foreigner in a foreign land, and there is no mistaking my accent and different upbringing, I’ve been here so long now that it does all feel pretty familiar. The road markings. The brands. The way people speak. The architecture.

Like the entrepreneur’s curse is always to be walking that tightrope of fear and responsibility, and feeling guilty when not working, the expat’s curse is to feel almost at home, but not quite, both in country of birth and country of residence. When you’re an American working in America, you (or at least I, and I did quite a bit of work with overseas organisations so I like to think I’m pretty open minded) tend to have a feeling of ‘other’ when dealing with anyone outside your country. It’s not a trust issue, it’s a familiarity issue, and it is damn weird when a Bostonian actually does have more in common with someone from Toronto than someone from Little Rock.

Be that as it may, this is how I now feel about South Africans. ‘They’ are ‘mine’ in that this is now as much my home culture as America is. I may never love or understand rugby like I love or understand football. But I feel more and more at home every month. Justin even commented when we were running: How long have you been here? Six years? THREE? Only three? Wow.

Yeah. I feel that way too sometimes. I was just looking through my photos from 2010 recently. That feels like a lifetime ago. Different people in my life; I couldn’t yet do a pullup, different field of work, certainly a lot more immature. And if I’m this much more mature three years later, I have a lot of growing to do still. I’m tired just thinking about it.

But back to reality. That run was an epic way to start the day! I followed it up with lunch at Sandbar, accidentally running into Roland and getting some great feedback on mobility, dorsiflexion, and Olympic lifting, while I was busy doing whatever it is I was doing. Brain still not fully engaged. And I forgot to write down his best quotes. Although I’m sure he had some. Probably wasn’t trying hard enough.

Then: I flew to Port Elizabeth to speak at a conference, which I wasn’t really in the mood to do but you do what you must. Was fun though, as always!

Back again to Cape Town and a welcome sleep in my own bed, but the weekend and first half of the week was telling: last week did take it out of me. Overtraining and overworking manifest similarly.

And then there was a bit of a shock to the system on Tuesday morning. I can tell when people are being emotional, of course, but when there is a deep truth to what they are saying, and the truth is something you’ve not really concerned yourself with because it’s kind of immaterial to you, but that doesn’t mean it’s immaterial to others. Makes you think.

I was trying to explain something to Jeff on Saturday – how sometimes just because you CAN do something doesn’t mean you SHOULD. It may be better to lose a battle than to lose the war, and there’s a hell of a lot more to life and work than money. I don’t know if I’ll be in the telecoms space, or in the tech space, or in Cape Town, or Johannesburg, or even on this continent in the next few years. What I do know? The way that I go about doing things matters. I may not be perfect, but at least I try to do good.

Intrinsic motivation, and aces in their places. That’s kind of the name of the game this week. I am about to unleash an interesting series of events, internally and externally. Will be interesting to see what happens when the dust settles.

But damn, it hurts when I see someone I care about get hurt.

I also want to pat myself on the back for listening to my body. Trained Tuesday morning and just wasn’t feeling it … at all. I couldn’t snatch to save my life, so I stopped early. Next day woke up at my normal 5:30am time and felt exhausted and unmotivated. So I skipped gym and went back to bed. Clearly what I needed was rest, not more training.

Got it back that night when I went to throw down with the boys Nick and Peter at CrossFit City Bowl. My snatch was back, and we did a sneaky little workout that kicked all of our asses …. But hey, I still beat the boys. That was the idea, after all.

Training by yourself might have an element of Rocky to it, sure, but as I said above it’s a bit lonely. And lacking girls to throw down with, I’ll play with the boys.

• “I think we both know that’s completely untrue.” – Jeff
• “5 is nearly 6. 3 is nearly 2!” – Sam
• “I kind of like them both.” – Ellie (indecisive much?)
• “A frustrated man with a smartphone? Well you could take a photo of me right now!” – Andrew
• “We got a verbal on the Cape Town event.” “What, even after my porn joke?” – two of my crew
• “I also like Joburg.” “Yeah. I don’t understand that.” – Ellie & Damon
• “It’s pretty!” “It’s pretty useless!” – Ellie & Stefan
• “I’ve said that to a number of them. It didn’t go very well.” – Jade
• “In my opinion, I’m right and you’re wrong, no matter what that date says.” – Jeff
• “You’re going to kill us!” “That’s the idea!” – Peter & Ellie
• “Even if we’re not really competing; it’s still a competition!” – Ellie
• “You get around a lot, hey!” – Nick 

In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king

There is a certain amount of power you have just by having knowledge, and context. Information asymmetry, in other words.

This is why we [should] respect masters and gurus and teachers and people with more wisdom than we have. It’s also a way to get things done.

When you have knowledge and/or connections others lack, you hold the cards. You can see, more clearly, the playing field. You can see when your competitors are playing checkers on a chess board.

You may not see when your knight is about to get taken, but you’re usually pretty aware of where your queen is at and your strategy to win.

Interesting week, last one. I was in lovely Johannesburg. The pull to this place gets stronger and stronger every time I go. It doesn’t help that the winter up there is somewhat nicer than in Cape Town. The nights are cold, yes, but the days are sunny and warm.

I was in Jozi this week primarily for lead generation. I was speaking at two conferences: one on shopper marketing, the other a telecoms conference about customer loyalty and retention. For neither of these audiences was Wi-Fi necessarily a topic they knew about, and for both it was a bit of a mental stretch, I think. But the people who got what I was saying, why, and the implications, properly got it.

So, mission accomplished. I’ve also discovered that I really do like public speaking. Especially by the Friday morning presentation, I was flying. Then again, I’d just come out of what was possibly one of the most important meetings of my career (on another, broader, business development topic), and it had gone even better than I could have expected. This is what knowledge, context, and framing gets you.

I was pondering a bit this week, again, as I was having dinners with a few different folks, whether I am more salesman, connector, or maven. The first dinner was with a guy I knew from WBA. Unfortunately for both of us, the way that dinner went was that I had to drink him under the table (make him struggle to keep up, at least). This only happened because I warned him who he was dealing with, and he didn’t listen. The second was with a gentlemen I’d just met, from Egypt. Most interesting series of conversations, that.

There’s three types of people in the world: the ones who know what’s going on and control it, the ones who can see what’s going on but can’t predict or manipulate it, and the ones who don’t know what the hell is going on. I obviously prefer the first type – these are the ones who make change. And change is fun.

To be a salesman, connector, or maven doesn’t mean that you’re not all three. In a way, my role is actually more maven at the moment than salesman. But the salesman always comes out. Maybe because the tech I’m working with is just so cool, and so complex.

Like one of the conversations this week: the telecommunications industry is a bit addictive because it’s always changing, and it’s insanely complex. How do ISPs keep from being dumb pipes? And how do mobile carriers stop from becoming a different sort of dumb pipe, with OTT companies eating them for lunch? How does one innovate before you’re on a burning platform? Especially in a big company? This is what keeps such smart, SMART people as I’ve met in this last week in the industry for 10+ years.

Speaking of titans of industry, I met one of the sharks I’d heard rumours of this week. Is it possible to be excited and apprehensive at the same time? I suppose, in my position, one must be. To be anything less would be naïve.

You really only live in your own head. I discovered, a bit to my chagrin, that I lack the sympathy gene, or at least the false sympathy gene. It goes with the filter problem: if I don’t care, I have a hard time pretending.

Sometimes I do care, but even still: I feel more sorry for myself being injured and food poisoned last year at Regionals than I do for the others that under-performed. But even still, there is a specific understanding that only athletes who have lived that specific scenario at the same time can feel, and when one of you brings it up, it just causes emotions to come to the fore, followed by other, related emotions of frustration.

It’s funny too: a comment that to one person might not have a lot of meaning, someone who is listening, and who understands, can feel the emotion behind. I suppose in a way even to reveal this part of yourself requires a bit of trust. Top athletes don’t just let out their fears and frustrations in public; you’re supposed to congratulate the ones who did well and not be mired in self-pity. But yet you feel what you feel.

Being injured sucks. And being out of control sucks, at least when it’s not willingly. And it’s a pipe dream, but sometimes I wish that I could have someone really smart and competent would take care of me, and make all my decisions for me. I’d hate that in the long term, but at times of emotional overload I wouldn’t mind a day or a few like that.

There’s a difference, I guess, between having stuff be more than you can handle, and more than you can comfortably handle. Plus, at the end of the day, you don’t really have a choice, and that’s how you get stronger. You don’t quit in the middle of a CrossFit workout. It’s just not done.

I was just saying above how I act funny when I’m a bit insecure. It’s …. Interesting, I guess, to see someone else acting similarly funny. What makes us insecure in different scenarios, and why we act as we do: no real answers of course.

One thing I don’t care for in Joburg is the traffic. I could NOT raise myself out of bed Wednesday morning and then had to drive to the gym, so I got to my hosts for the week at CrossFit Kyalami a bit later than I’d anticipated. And from there, the teasing began: “I thought you were going to come EARLY!”. I do so much enjoy travelling about to other boxes because you learn something new from each of the coaches. Plus it’s quite nice to have people about when I’m training. The loneliness of the 6am training session at Cape CrossFit is dramatic, sure, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s not lonely.

Gyms do take on the personalities of their owners, and this one is fun. It’s serious, yes – technique is important. But you can’t spend five minutes there without smiling. At least I can’t. But then again it’s like Schrodinger’s cat: I have no idea what it’s like when I’m not there to observe. But the logo is pretty cool. I like the logo quite a lot. I guess it doesn’t take that much to generate a brand affinity in me.

Come Friday night flight back from Joburg I was flat exhausted. Not enough sleep, a bit too much of emotional highs and lows. When I landed in Cape Town, it was raining sideways.

I do sometimes question this almost irrational pull to Johannesburg. But it’s like most matters of the heart: the heart wants what it wants, regardless of what actually makes sense. There are some things and people in Cape Town that keep me here, and may well continue to do. But there are also people that pull me to Joburg.

So much for predicting the future. For now I will be content that I live in a place that I love deeply, and I get to travel to another place I am coming to love, and develop relationships that side as well.

• “Logic always wins, Ellie.” – Riaan
• “Don’t look now, but your boss is behind you.” – Ellie
• “You know me. You don’t need to know anyone else in here.” – Lance [true]  
• “What, are you too short?” – Ricky
• “It didn’t work?” “No, it didn’t work because you have to pay for it.” – Ellie & Gabriel
• “You woke up at 4 for gym and you don’t know why you’re exhausted?” – Cedric
• “You have all the cards.” – Spencer
• “But you do, just by being there.” – Spencer (ah, to be exotic for no good reason)
• “And unfortunately for them, you’re also intelligent.” – Spencer
• “Yeah. You learned your coach isn’t Jewish.” – Ricky (I learned this one the hard way…)
• “That’s not really a fair question, because the answer is always yes, even if the answer is no.” – Ellie (this got me something closer to the actual answer)
• “I think you just get used to it.” “I don’t want to get used to being exhausted!!” – Megan & Ellie
• “Choose. And the status quo is also a choice.” – Ellie
• “Oh. You're [brand]. Of course you are.” – Ellie
• “Those skills we can replicate. We can’t replicate the thinking behind it.” – Maged
• “Yes you are.” – Cedric
• “Sometimes I think it may get a bit confused.” – Ellie
• “What, did you get attacked by a lion?” “No. An elephant trampled my guide.” – Ellie & [can’t disclose … stupid NDA!]
• “You’re dealing with them. You must know.” – Adnan 

TEDx and Beyond

Sometimes, I frustrate me. I absolutely hate that feeling of mental and physical exhaustion … especially when I know fully well that it’s poor decision-making around sleep and lifestyle that is going to come back to bite me if I’m not careful. What’s the point of all this training after all? Yes, it’s for lifestyle, and yes it’s for fitness, but it’s also to perform well in competition but there’s a hell of a lot more to THAT than just putting in the hours in the gym practicing technique.

Saturday I woke up at some ungodly hour of the morning to drive to Lanseria to fly back to Cape Town. It was the more ungodly because after a girls’ night at Montecasino, I spent far too long on chat before finally going to bed. Adding insult to injury, I accidentally miscalculated how long it would take to get to the airport, but luckily at that time of the morning in Joburg no one really seems to obey the traffic lights much.

I arrived mid-morning at TEDx Cape Town, where my spectacular team were busy saving the day, and keeping the Wi-Fi up and running. An afternoon routing crisis on my core network got me much more upset than it probably should have; yet another reason why sleep deprivation is not a good idea.

For what I was able to see of it, I enjoyed the TEDx. It gave me goosebumps to see my friend Riaan speak, to check the whole thing from the catwalk (best seats in the house), and there was the magical musical performance of Shannon Hope. She had this one line: ‘Just being a grownup is hard. May as well do something that makes you happy.’

She was talking about her own search for passion and meaning in life, which she found in music. Great as long as the music can pay the bills, as she acknowledged. I was having a bit of a hard time with some of this because while it’s true in theory that you can inspire other people, you can’t TRY to inspire them as that’s just disingenuous, and you can be as inspiring as you want but you can’t make people pay attention.

She was saying that you can’t measure your success in dollars and cents. In a way, this is true. In another: this is actually how I WANT to measure myself. Is it a poor reflection on me that I want to play by the established rules of the business world, where power is power and money is money and money is power?

Those are circles I’m comfortable in, and that I like. People have told me I should open a CrossFit gym or some such. No desire. None. I don’t want to measure my success in terms of changing other peoples’ lives. That’s why I could never be a teacher. I want to build things, not people. That’s more important to me than the money, but the money follows.

I will build people too, as such is part of being a manager and a leader, and at the end of the day I do love my people. Skills you can buy; loyalty you cannot. You need both. But I get more pleasure out of building someone who then fulfils a function that I need than in just building people generally. It’s the same as software – the pleasure is in the building blocks.

Back to TEDx. There was also this woman who had come out of the aid space who was talking about the twin devils of pity and contempt for anyone poorer and darker than we, and the arrogance of sitting around presuming to be the ones who could come up with a solution. She went on to say that countless times they must have talked about plans and goals and initiatives …. But not once had they sat down and admitted they were wrong, or they should learn or change or grow. And here I sat, with a sort of smug satisfaction that I didn’t hold people in such contempt (but I suppose I sometimes do), and that at Skyrove we are as quick to talk about things that we are not doing well that should be fixed as we are about our wins (and yet we don’t always fix them, and we do have blind spots).

I guess you can only try to do your best.

But hell, even that is a big ask.

After TEDx, I went to observe a video shoot for my friends at HealthQ, at Black River CrossFit, where I’d hooked them up with the owner. So in a way, I suppose I was almost the godfather of the video. In a moment somewhere between highly embarrassing and highly flattering, it turns out that ‘the talent’ for the video actually recognized me from a CrossFit competition. And he’s actually the semi-famous one.

I act very silly when I’m feeling a bit insecure. I suppose that’s how one can tell: if I’m bragging, I’m probably feeling insecure. If I’m making fun of myself, I’m comfortable. Usually, I’m making fun of myself.

Sunday was another emotional day as I slept in (for like 10 hours!) then got up to have brunch with my gorgeous, intelligent, and gregarious friend Elizabeth who just moved to Cape Town. She asked me what was going on, and I spat out this great long plan. But she got it. She’s smart. And the plan is, at least, coherent.

I’m excited to have her in town.

Then I went down to Misty Cliffs to say a pre-goodbye goodbye to Kerry and her family. It is hard to describe how I feel about this, other than that, in a way it’s a bit hard to accept. She’s been there through my very beginnings in CrossFit, and at Skyrove, and now I’m at a different place with both, and still moving: because, well, what choice does one have?

Someone asked me recently what is the point of the CrossFit training. For once I came out with an honest answer. For now, for right now, it’s to perform as well as possible in competitions. It won’t always be this way. But try and take the competitor out of a competitor. Not gonna happen.

Monday was actually a really bad day. I woke up in the morning to do my normal thing, and it was raining and cold, so I didn’t get to see the sunrise I’ve been accustomed to. Then I did a workout that was called ‘Barnacle Bashing’ but may as well have been called ‘Get on the Rower and Die’ because it ended with a 500m row and so you knew the entire time that you were going to get on that rower … and die.

So after that, how could the day help but get better? Normally this is fine, but I started to feel ill, and that made me very unhappy because I had a big week ahead of me and could not afford to get sick.

Plus, sick means can’t train, and sick means burnout. But hey I had an interesting lunch with a competitor and then spent two hours going over our customer database.

Every day is different, and the difference between a good day and a bad day is between the ears.

• “I think you and I both need to get more sleep.” – Ellie
• “I think we like you, Ellie.” – Riaan
• “I mean it. I don’t say things I don’t mean.” – Riaan
• “He’s not even breaking a sweat.” “That’s ok. We have baby oil.” – Ellie & video producer
• “It’s ok. We don’t hate all of them.” – Nicol
• “Oh! You’re the rocket scientist.” – Ellie (sometimes I’m a bit slow on the uptake)
• “You were so sharply close I’m stunned.” – Cedric (one day he may stop being surprised)
• “If you’re going to go to a beer festival in South Africa, how better to do it than with a bakkie full of Namibians?” – Tim
• “I didn’t give him full access. He just took full access.” – Rudolph 

Shaking trees

I am starting to get excited. Like: properly excited. I’ve started shaking some trees to see what happens, and so has Rudolph. So far, so interesting.

The last week was a pretty epic one for me. It had both highs and lows, as does every week, but more highs than lows. The biggest deposit in company history on Monday, a verbal yes on a very exciting pilot on Tuesday, agreement for free bandwidth on a cool little project on Wednesday, one of my sales team got her first verbal on an event that same day.

Oh and we had a little company party to celebrate a birthday, three anniversaries of employment at Skyrove, and some of our recent wins. Which, if I have anything to do with it, will be just the start.

Thursday I was in Joburg and after watching the deeply strange launch of smart ID cards on Mandela’s birthday on SABC, the highlight of THAT day had to be drinking wine in the boardroom of one of our partner companies. Best part of this was that two of the other guys there are both serious athletes: one is an Ironman and the other an ultra-marathoner. So here we are drinking wine and eating biltong and talking about biomechanics of running in between Wi-Fi talk. Yeah so fun but not necessarily terribly exciting although I got what I needed out of that meeting as well.

Friday started off with an early morning CrossFit session at CrossFit ProForm; a bit rushed due to my underestimating the ability of the Johannesburg traffic to start at 5am!!, then into downtown for a most interesting meeting. Yes, you need to know where you stand, and why you matter to your potential partners. This may be the beginning of something very interesting. We shall see. That afternoon brought a presentation on Wi-Fi in retail to NATIVE, and my intro to the very smart and insightful Jared Cinman, then some balcony wine, a girls night at Monte Casino, and back for some late night chat that kept me up past my bedtime.

What a week. It was fun, yes, but also utterly exhausting and not in a good way.

So when I’m a bit stressed I drink coffee and eat a bit too much. When I am very stressed I stop eating and I can’t even sleep; I wake up after 5-6 hours. This does not fit well with the athlete lifestyle, and I know full well it can’t continue. But stress is in the head, so how do you control your head?

Starts with more sleep.

I want to give a particular shout out to Riaan this week, who was there for me when I needed him, and I didn’t even realise I needed him. Even super heroes need moral support, hey. To realise and assess where you are, openly and honestly, is the only way you can move forward.

The last post had some interesting responses: within a few hours Craig and Kate had both replied to say thank you, and, by the way, I had impacted them for the good as well. My ego needed that, I think, because while on the one hand you can be so confident (and must be confident), on the other you do suffer with this shadow of doubt, especially when people look to you for answers and results.

It is mentally exhausting even while being fun. It’s my job, after all, to calmly assess situations and make rational, adult decisions. It’s harder to be the grownup when you’re tired. But I must also remind myself, yet again, that it’s not just me learning from those around me …. It’s me teaching them as well. It’s wonderful that I can ping my friends about the world for their thoughts and feedback on business models and such, but I’m sure they get something as well out of helping me out.

I have found myself thinking about a few things lately; mostly related to Wi-Fi but not entirely. I’ve long ago credited my non-profit work for teaching me lateral thinking. One of my business partners put it well this week when we were talking about how you can’t really teach that (I know you tried, Babson, but no, it didn’t work!). You learn lateral thinking when you want to do something and can’t. So you try another way. And another way if that doesn’t work.

If I want something badly enough and I think it’s possible, I will figure out a way. If it’s what I’m focused on. Right now I’m focused on some very complicated multi-party negotiations, and most of the parties involved are in Joburg. So I’m, again, looking to Joburg.

Now Joburg is a place that I really enjoy. I think it’s the energy of the place, but also this: when I first visited South Africa, I enjoyed the rough edge of it. The reality of living in a place that’s less mollycoddled than the USA. But then again, Cape Town is not reality. It’s too beautiful and too safe and too cosmopolitan and European.

Joburg is more of an African city (not that I have much experience with Africa to know). I find it charming that the traffic lights go out and that the security is for real and not just for show as in Cape Town. It’s not actually charming. It’s unpleasant. But it’s also more real.

I suppose you create the future for yourself that you envision, and I’ve been thinking a lot recently about my own future. Will I outgrow Cape Town? Rather, when will I? Is it a problem to worry about things, and people, that will ‘tie me down?’ I’ve been burned before by letting a groove turn into a rut and before I knew it I woke up living someone else’s life and was absolutely miserable, but I’m more aware now and that result is less likely to occur.

But still, Joburg has a pull to it. Maybe some day I will live there. Or maybe I will just have what is, in some ways, the perfect life, where I live in one of the most beautiful cities in the world and my close friends are here, and maybe, just maybe, I could even settle down here, but in a life that lets me travel to places like Joburg and London on a regular basis.

When I was at Ask Jeeves International at the tender age of 21 or whatever, I recognised then that I had pretty much a dream job. I have pretty much a dream job now. It will be better in six months. I hope. I plan. I know what needs to happen for it to get better for me, so now to apply those lateral thinking skills and that good old competitive nature.

Yeah. Running in anger indeed.

• “Merry Christmas.” – Jeff
• “How did you do that?” – Allister
• “Also struggle to tick off items on your to-do list fast enough? Look on the bright side: you have a to-do list.” - Nicol
• “Yeah, I guess I didn’t actually answer your question but evaded it, huh?” – Ellie  
• “Wow.” – Stefan (this was a good wow. We like those.)
• “I’m not sure how much free will really exists in this world.” “There is that.” – Ellie & Paul
• “Is this where you get on the rower and die?” “Yes.” – Ellie & Amy
• “It looks good and glad to see you're a vegetarian.” – Spencer
• “You can tell that they’re all technically inclined.” – Jade
• “Please don’t fail.” – Cedric
• “It’s a gangster business.” – a gangster
• “There’s no real benchmark.” “Not in this country. No.” – John & Ellie
• “My brother carries knives around.” “Yeah but he’s probably not crazy.” “He’s a chef.” – Tim & Adam
• “Welcome to the club.” – Cedric
• “I invest a lot, especially in my guys here because: knowledge is power.” – Rudolph
• “It’s one of the best I’ve seen.” – Rudolph
• “Stop telling me things like this. Just fix it.” – Ellie
• “I’m just reading the email … Telkom installed lines in the library instead of the server room.” “Oh. Yeah. That makes sense. Where is that?” “Pretoria.” – Ellie & Tim
• “If a lot of people hate you, that’s a good place to be.” – Paul
• “No. You’re going to be on the front lines. Not us.” – Paul
• “Failing over to Seacom is like failing over to 3G.” – Ellie
• “Well isn’t that funny, I happen to know someone who works in sales there.” “Of course you do.” “Well. This is Cape Town.” – Ellie & Rudolph
• “I’d say being evil is a good thing to be average at.” – Charles
• “This counts [as hitting me over the head].” – Ellie
• “That’s more than ok!” – Ricky
• “No, it’s definitely the third kind.” – Andre
• “The fundamentals don’t change.” – Murray
• “We were talking about Wi-Fi. They somehow we got onto pig entrails.” – Ellie (true story)
• “When Doug’s on a mission, I don’t think that’s not impossible.” – Simon (!!)
• “How did we drink two bottles of wine?” “I don’t know. Ask Murray.” – Simon
• “I also suffer from the ‘have problems keeping my mouth shut’.” – Nicol
• “I can a little but with some limits.” – Cedric
• “You can walk the walk, hey?” – Louie (this was not a question)
• “It’s all about breakage.” – Eugene
• “You don’t have a typical nerd profile.” – Vuyisile
• “A straw would be great, but not with the wine.” – Vuyisile
• “No, that doesn’t make you look like a tourist at all.” – Willem 

Lessons learned

You learn so many things from other people, and the situations you are in.

I had a bit of a weird situation last week where I had asked a question on Whatsapp then didn’t actually read the answer until I left another meeting, in which the same subject had come up. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

I thought I was busy before but the level of intensity got turned up a notch in the last week. Busy is the wrong word, actually. I am not always working smart, if I don’t take the time to step back and evaluate what is going on.

There’s some magical ‘they’ who say it’s always darkest before the dawn. I’ve been waking up very early recently and I disagree. Before the dawn is no different than earlier in the night. There is something very VERY dark about the witching hour time of around 2-4am. No one should be awake, then.

I find that there is a certain time of the day when the world around you starts to wake up and reply to emails. It’s around 7am. That time of 6-7am when I’m essentially alone in the new room of the gym, just me, my barbell, my demons, and the rising sun.

It sounds so dramatic that way. But I do. In some ways I cannot imagine life to be different than it is. In other ways, it’s crazy that I’m here now, in this place, in this job, doing this sport. Perhaps in my own way I am fighting demons in each of these areas. And what I’m avoiding?

Well, with my feet firmly towards the future, before I recount the events of the last week at Skyrove which were, in a word, amazing (things are finally, FINALLY, starting to come together as I’ve been working towards), I was reflecting a lot on what I have learned that has enabled me to do what I am now doing. Because, what I am now doing requires an understanding of lots of different things. What triggered this is that my dear friend Kerry Murray, who has recently been doing some PR/content marketing work for Skyrove, is moving back to the States and I am bummed. I think I learned most of what she has to say that’s valuable to me in the here and now. But it is hard to lose a friend. Especially this one.

I have been so lucky in my past to work with some people who are expects in their field and who managed to teach me a lot not explicitly but just by their desire to do the best thing possible for the company. So, with no further ado I bring you:

PR & Content Marketing: Kerry Murray. The key insight? What place is to the four Ps of marketing, applies also to PR. Get in front of your people where they consume, whether that is online, print, conferences, and make sure that your web site structure allows you to capture this. The whole notion of writing opinion pieces as a method of lead generation is new to me in the last year, and I get the basics now, thanks to Kerry.

Enterprise Sales: Rick Lamy. There was a time when I resented, a bit, Rick’s customer focus. Since I was in charge of product management sometimes there would be a tendency for the tail to wag the dog and sales to push for features to be added that were not core critical in my opinion, but at the end of the day he knew his sh*t backwards and forwards. I learned from this man what channel sales needs to look like, how to support the channel, and what an enterprise sales cycle looks like. I may never have had a day of formal sales training in my life, but I know how to sell largely because of Rick.

Product Marketing: Kate Mosteller. I also used to get a bit frustrated with this lovely woman because she wouldn’t immediately understand what the product did and why it was important. ‘It has feature X, can’t you see why that’s so critical?????’ Yeah. No. She taught me the difference between function and benefit, and that you need to sell the ‘what’s in it for me’ element. If you can’t explain what your product or service or feature does for a customer, may as well go home.

Strategy: Harry Graff. Actually a marketing professor. Right up there with Michael Cummings in my book, but what stood out to me about Harry Graff was that he finally made me understand that product management (my career) WAS marketing, and marketing WAS strategy. At least if you do it right. Strategy is an over-arching umbrella that starts with the customer and ends with consistency of execution to the brand promise and the specific product or service being sold.

Line Management: Craig Larson. He used to run a McDonalds. Then he ran the Exit41 call centre. I am not going to claim that I have his managerial skills, or even close … but he taught me a thing or two about no-nonsense thinking and not taking crap. You must manage people differently but in the last week, as I suppose, in all weeks, I’ve had to lay people down and say that what they wanted to do was not going to work, and we had to find another way. I’ve always been blunt. I try to be kind. But I’ve also been always a bit of a softie, and I can feel that part of me falling away, because it has to. This is neither here nor there, but a part of Craig I always respected, and I am now emulating.

The Right Approach: Robin Keller. I recently was thinking of Robin and emailed him, and in his reply he mentioned something about Wise Speech, a concept from Theravada Buddhism. He taught me not to rush into things, and a lot of tactical things about software development that mainly boil down to this: figure out what you’re going to do, do it right, and for heaven’s sake, don't be sloppy when it counts.

There have been many, many others over the years for whom I have a deep respect. Z Holly, Ed Boudrot, Clay Johnson, Steve Pennypacker, Chris Hanaoka, Matthew Temple, Sakiko Kimura, Steve McDonnell, Steve Lilley, Laura Snow, Eric Stromberg, Bernhard Kohlmeier. I am sure I am missing a bunch. Kevin Ho, who taught me that smart people can think very differently from me, and that if you have access to a machine you 0wn the machine. A lesson I’ve never forgotten.

I have a tendency, for better or worse, to say what I feel. I don’t like to lie because then I must remember what I lied about. That’s one thing. Worse is that there is some part in me that does not like to leave something on the table. You ask me something and I’ll tell you what I think, pretty much all of it.

Sometimes too much. But I do reserve the right to change my mind when presented with new information. Anything less would be pretty foolish. Way worse to lead off a cliff than to admit your path was not a good one.

Here’s to not being foolish, and seeing what is there and not just what you want to see, although I do believe we create or influence our own futures to a certain degree. The degree can vary but deny it at your peril. Believe you will succeed and you may. Believe you will fail? Then you must definitely will.

But why think like that? Life is far too bright & precious to worry about fear & failure.

Back to the type I and type II errors. If we all regret more the things we didn’t do or the path we didn’t take, why is it that the fears hold us back every day are the little ones?

What, at the end of the day, is the biggest fear we all have? Rejection, probably. Not sure if it’s a real study or urban legend that people are more afraid of death than of public speaking. I think the fear is of making a fool and being embarrassed by that. Yeah so if you approach a company for a deal and they say no or you go for the close and are turned away … move on.

I suppose it may also be good to think of both the long term and the immediate future but not everything in between. Just like a CrossFit chipper. Know how to pace yourself but don’t think about those 20 front squats at the end. Speaking of which I want to do that one again. And 13.5 now that my chest-to-bar pullups are improving.

The great joy of following a training programme is that you don’t have to think for yourself (ok, I do, freedom with responsibility). But I can’t just go and do workouts that I think would be fun. Doesn’t mean I’m not going to mix in some trail races though!

Life is short. If you’re not having fun… why bother? More on this in the next post.