👋🏾 Hi friends!
And here we go, one last edition from me before I sign off completely for the rest of the year.
Whatever you are doing during the festive period, I hope you are able to get some down time and spend the holidays with people that give you energy – be they loved ones, family, friends or someone else altogether!
I will be sipping a 0 alcohol beer and enjoying some traditional Tuscan fare on Monday and I’ll be toasting what has been a rollercoaster of a year for me – from running out of cash in the startup I launched in 2021 to doubling down on my CFO consultancy, meeting great people along the way and working with some amazing startups, 2023 is definitely a year I won’t be forgetting anytime soon.
Wishing you all the best for the New Year, and for now, thanks for having signed up and tuned in to this ever evolving newsletter that has kept me just a little bit… Off Balance 💪 🙏
(ignore the beard, I don’t think I’m going to be fooling anyone as Santa this year 😂 )
This week on Nothing Ventured, I spoke to Matthew Stafford, Co-Founder of 9Others and early stage investor.
Here’s what you can expect:
➡️ Why founders and entrepreneurs need a safe place to share.
➡️ Purposefully building a business that doesn’t scale.
➡️ Why Matthew doesn’t invest in first time pitches from founders he is meeting for the first time.
➡️ Building relationships with no expectations.
Check it out!
Last year I wrote a series of posts listing 100 lessons I’ve learned from almost 20 years as a CEO, CFO and more recently founder, it was one of those things I just wanted to get out there and I posted it as I was about to get on a plane and head off to Zanzibar with 40 odd of my nearest and dearest.
Little was I to know that it would go absolutely crazy hitting a combined 1m impressions and thousands of likes and hundreds of comments and shares.
Next year I will be reskinning the format of Off Balance to dig into those lessons in more detail and am excited to get writing.
So I thought it would be fitting this year to write another bunch of lessons one year on, so in today’s Lowdown, you’re going to get…
🧑🏫 50 lessons from 12 more months as a CEO, Founder and CFO
Also, if you have any feedback, or if there’s something you’re desperate to see me include, just reply to this mail or ping me online – I’m very open to conversations.
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(If you are trying to connect with me on LinkedIn, maybe read this post I wrote and make sure to start your request with “Lowdown” and, more importantly, tell me why you’d like to connect 💪🏾)
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Now let’s get into it.
This edition of Nothing Ventured is brought to you by EmergeOne.
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The Lowdown
1. Raise capital because you need it, not because you can.
2. All the modelling in the world won’t save a flawed idea.
3. Go out and talk to your g-d d-med customers.
4. Leadership is showing, not telling.
5. The first time I feel nothing letting someone go is the last time I’ll do it.
6. Just because I can work from anywhere doesn’t mean I should.
7. But work where you get energy.
8. Find investors that understand you, not just your business.
9. 1% a day isn’t the way, but consistency is.
10. Have skin in the game.
11. Building a funded startup is getting paid to learn.
12. Often it’s learning what doesn’t work.
13. Bootstrapping means you have to learn what does.
14. Treasury management is suddenly ‘a thing’ (it always was).
15. Radical candour != being abrasive, empathy wins.
16. Do what you’re amazing at doing, passion emerges.
17. Success is different for everyone.
18. There’s never been a better time to leverage technology.
19. Ask and you shall receive. Don’t ask and you don’t get.
20. Helping others is a great way to understand your own thinking.
21. Leverage capital, people, tech and media but don’t abuse them.
22. You have to work at everything. All the time.
23. Remove negativity from your life.
24. Abundance comes when you realise you don’t need everything.
25. We stand on the shoulders of giants.
26. But it’s all relative.
27. When you know you’re onto a winner, ride it till the end.
28. Focus everything you do back on to one singular goal.
29. Doing everything means you’ll end up with nothing.
30. Cash, still, trumps everything.
31. You don’t have a business unless you have processes.
32. Trust is the most valuable coin in the world.
33. Never accept mediocrity, from yourself or those around you.
34. A players lift everyone up, B players lift themselves, C players drag down.
35. Be open to every possibility, that doesn’t mean you have to try them all.
36. Bad customers suck time and energy and kill your business.
37. Quitting drinking was transformational for me, it might not be for you.
38. Therapy was transformational for me, it will be for you.
39. Growth only begins when you start getting uncomfortable.
40. Every day you’re still alive is another day to make a difference.
41. A team is more than a group of people, it’s a machine, keep it tuned.
42. Wealth is not something you should only measure with money.
43. Zero interest rates were an abherration, let the normal times roll.
44. A career is for other people.
45. Expect things to go wrong, that way they’ll go less wrong than you thought.
46. Write for yourself first, there will always be an audience somewhere.
47. If you have to shut down, don’t drag it out.
48. 0 risk = 0 reward.
49. Fractional isn’t the future for everyone – but it is for us.
50. Control your emotions, building a business requires strength.
Bring on 2024 🚀
And finally, as we get into the last hours and minutes before most of the west signs off for Christmas, I thought this summed it up pretty well 😂
That Friday feeling
— Wall Street Memes (@wallstmemes)
Dec 22, 2023
🚀And that’s a wrap for this edition of The Lowdown – I’d appreciate your feedback so just reply to this email if you’ve got something you’d like to say.
📨 And if you think someone else might love this, please forward it on to them,
🎧 Finally, if you’re a fan of the Nothing Ventured podcast, please don’t forget to like, rate and subscribe wherever you get your pods – it really helps us spread the word.
That’s it from me so until next time…
Stay liquid 🙂
Aarish
