Hi, it’s Melissa, Cofounder and CEO of eWebinar. Welcome (back) to “your founder next door“, a weekly publication on the strategies and stories behind building a company without an abundance of resources and friends in high places. No BS, just straight-up truth bombs.
What got me thinking this month
Last weekend, we flew to Ibiza to celebrate David’s birthday with some friends.
On one of the nights, we ended up at a villa that was just outrageous. It had a lagoon pool, a dome for meditations and ceremonies (with the same frequency as The Great Pyramid of Giza apparently), an outdoor sauna in a garden, a main house plus a five-bedroom casita on the side, and a bunker built for parties.
I don’t know much about the owner. I was just a guest of a guest. He’s a tech founder who exited some years ago, bought the property, and recently renovated it so he could use it as a community house.
At midnight, when it officially became David’s birthday, I asked him how he was feeling.
He said, unaccomplished.
Birthdays are a time for reflection. They’re also when we tend to measure ourselves against the goals and dreams we had way back when. I think I can speak for a lot of us when I say we’re never as far as we want to be.
That’s very true for David. He left Microsoft 12 years ago to join a startup in New York, which is how we met. They raised $10M from VCs and hopes were high, but after a few years it didn’t work out. He consulted as a fractional CTO for a while, then joined me at eWebinar shortly after I started the company. He’s never seen the success he’s always dreamed of. Frankly, neither have I.
He told me he was standing in this stranger’s house thinking, this is the experience I should be giving my friends. And he felt nowhere near it.
I didn’t respond. I just listened. I knew exactly what he meant. As his cofounder, I felt responsible even though I shouldn’t.
The next day, we went for one of those quintessential four-hour Ibiza lunches by the ocean with 12 of our friends. It was so much fun, so easy, and full of love. At the end, David told everyone that they make life worth living.
As we drove away from the restaurant, I told him what I’d been thinking since midnight…
We’re just two ordinary people trying to make it work, who learned everything from scratch. We had no advantages. We didn’t go to Ivy League schools, we didn’t have access to a network.
We may not have everything we set out to achieve today, but our lives are already so full. We have 100% control over our time. We have an abundance of love, friendship, and community. How many people can say that?
If I had to choose between all the money in the world, or this life, where our friends make time for us because they want to be there and not because of what’s in our bank account, I’d choose this life every time.
That’s not to say the things we want don’t matter. They do. Wanting them is the fuel for the fire, and we’re working towards them. They’ll come.
Right now, we are free. That is a huge achievement. Let’s not build our own prison out of the things we don’t have yet.
David agreed.
Comparison is really the thief of joy. Everyone is on their own journey, we have no idea how they got to where they are. We can’t compare our start to someone else’s middle, or our middle to someone else’s end.
Louis C.K. once said: The only time you look in your neighbor’s bowl is to make sure that they have enough. You don’t look in your neighbor’s bowl to see if you have as much as them.
Another friend recently told me a story he’d read in a book, about a man who had something a billionaire never would. I went looking for where it came from and found a short poem Kurt Vonnegut wrote for The New Yorker. He and his friend Joseph Heller, the author of Catch-22, were at a billionaire’s party on Shelter Island. Vonnegut asked Heller how it felt knowing their host might have earned more in one day than Catch-22 ever had.
Heller said he had something their host could never have. Knowing that he had enough.
My friend loved that story so much he got enough tattooed on him, to remind himself that he has enough, and that he is enough.
What got me thinking is this:
How much of what we already have do we miss while measuring what we don’t?
P.S. How is it October already?! January was yesterday!
Till next time,
— Melissa ✌️
Quick tidbits
I’m terrible at making conversations with strangers, and even worse at getting out of them. I just listened to this DOAC episode where Vanessa Van Edwards, a conversation expert, gets into how to eliminate awkward small talk and forge deeper connections.
If you’re not following Peter Hwang yet who writes “The Unstuck Entrepreneur”, you should. He’s one of the most real founders I’ve ever met and one of my favorites. He gives really grounded advice around how to navigate your business and life at the same time. Peter has had 4 exits, two of them back to back, 8 and 9 figures. I interviewed him on ProfitLed a few months ago. You can find the episode here.
My friend Kyle Racki, Cofounder of Proposify, recommended this book to me - No Bullsh*t Strategy: A Founder’s Guide to Gaining Competitive Advantage with a Strategy That Actually Works by Alex M.H. Smith. In a world where we’re inundated with strategies and nothing seems to really move the needle, this book cuts to the chase and makes you wonder whether things have to be that complicated.
This month’s articles you may have missed
The growth ceiling most businesses don’t see: Why I started eWebinar, and how I spent 6 years looking for people who had the same pain, only to find out they were in front of me the whole time.
Is comfort a disadvantage?: Matt Watson grew up in a trailer park and sold his first company for $150M at 29. He learned how to make money at a young age, but it has never been a motivator for him.
How to break down the wall in front of you: It’s not whether something works, it’s how long until it works for you.
🎙️ Season 3 of my podcast, ProfitLed, is now live. We’re exploring the intersection of Passion, Profit, and Purpose, and how those shifts as founders come into financial success.
Find it on your favorite podcast app: Apple, Spotify, YouTube
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I love this: "Let’s not build our own prison out of the things we don’t have yet." It’s a great reminder to look back at what we have achieved and reflect on how good our lives are in the present moment. We are often so stuck on the future and the next big thing that we forget how fortunate we already are.
I needed this today. Especially seeing so many successful entrepreneurs, it's easy to lose yourself in the best part of all: the journey to get there. By noticing what you already have and the fortunate situation you're in, you start building because of curiosity or interest rather than 'making it' to the next level of life. Thanks Melissa!