True story: in my 20s I thought teaching martial arts was going to be my career. I was always someone who needed to work hard to cover for lack of natural athletic talent, but by then I had been training for a few years and running most classes for my teacher. I had a small team that I was running out of a basement in Tel Aviv that I was subleasing from another teacher; it was barely breaking even and I was mostly funding it from my three other positions as a youth instructor and then from my work as a data analyst.

Then reality, and startups, and life interfered. Making ends meet was complicated enough without a black hole in my budget, and my move to San Jose sealed that part of my journey. I tried getting back to it occasionally and nothing ever clicked, I got injured once or twice, and having lived half of the last 9 years on planes didn’t help either. So, between all of the above I spent more than a decade away from the mats, wondering whether I was ever going to come back.

This year I found this school, and things clicked. And here I am, in my 40s, my whole body aching for oxygen that my lungs can’t provide while I struggle to hold my own against bigger, better opponents who are five, ten, and twenty years my junior. I still need to work twice as hard to compensate for my lack of talent. I may never get very far, but I don’t worry about that. I have time, and (a tiny bit) less ego, and mostly I have perspective: it turns out that I feel at my best when I’m fighting for my life, figuratively or literally. It’s also why, despite nursing my fourth mild injury in six months, I will be back to the mats as soon as humanly possible. As it turns out, we’re all going to die, but some things matter. This matters to me.

I’ve recently started helping a small team working on an early stage product. Before I got involved I heard troubling news: they had no product-market fit, a large deal had fallen through that was undermining core dynamics, and maybe it’s best to just build [insert latest fintech fad] instead. Once I got involved I discovered that the product had thousands of happy-path iterations, hundreds of thousands of proof points, and more traction than it could currently handle.

I did nothing but change the framing from how early products are perceived to find traction to how they actually find traction. Three observations here.

Only the visionary and the desperate: the more innovative or disruptive* your product is, the more it’s likely to find traction with early adopters. They are those who see the next paradigm before others do. Most of the time they are the ones that can’t fit in the current paradigm either because they want the new future you’re promising – the visionary – or the current paradigm is killing them – the desperate. They are never the largeco boss. Startups chasing that One Big Deal to Rule Them All aren’t chasing real traction, they’re chasing a rescue fantasy. Start with the few who love you, make them extremely successful, and watch how they become your best sales people.

Hard on the vision, easy on the details: teams often get stuck on certain modalities or early product features that aren’t core to what the product is trying to do, and that holds them back. Monetization is one example – it’s important to be paid, but the right combination of feature gating in your freemium model isn’t something you’re likely to get right on first try. Knowing where you want to go and then being flexible on other details is critical, otherwise every failed experiment feels like the product is failing. It isn’t – not as long as you have engaged happy-path users.

Product Market Fit hindsight: the way people describe PMF you’d think it feels like the Warp Drive engaging in Star Trek. It’s never that. Reaching PMF feels like a million different things breaking, customers complaining, and stuff you used to do manually not working on a daily basis. It’s an upward spiral that starts with a few users that love you, and a behavior that you encourage and build on. It’s almost never evident in the moment, and it often feels like failing forward.

*Some products still honestly deserve this adjective

Ever wondered why CEOs aren’t more visible outside of their formal commitments? It’s because doing anything outside of the paths of corporate machinery like connecting authentically on social media, or developing a hobby that requires creativity, or any similar activity requires a level of energy that senior people don’t have. That’s because of what running a company is like. It can be fun, and stressful, and many other things, but most of all it’s an incredible sink of emotional energy. Moving between engagements with different people in very different emotional states, handling mostly emergencies and escalations, hearing (sometimes) bad news and having to work through the rest of your day.

Running a company is like having a monkey on your shoulder 24/7, screaming for attention. I’m using “monkey” and not a more colorful “vampire” because we enjoy the work most of the time, it’s just demanding. I’m using “monkey” and not a more sinister and dramatic “black demon” because it doesn’t have to be (and in my case, isn’t) connected with depression or anxiety (well, beyond a CEO’s usual baseline which, if you ask Ben Horowitz, can be quite a lot). If you think it’s a silly metaphor, share it with your favorite c-level exec and watch their 1000-mile stare and the slight nod of agreement.

There’s nothing to do with the monkey. It’s there, forever really, unless you give up the role (and as someone who’s quit senior roles before, the monkey does go away). The downside is unless you’re very deliberate about it, after a while, the screaming is all you hear. So you stop doing anything not work-related, and you schedule less engagements, and you retreat into well-plowed paths of business management and maybe some investing because you never know on which day the monkey will wake up in a bad mood, so why risk the exposure of standing on stage talking about something while you’d rather be anywhere else because all you can hear is the monkey.

I wake up every morning determined to deal with the monkey because I feel that otherwise, almost two decades into my tech journey, I risk being flattened by the weight of its presence into being a very boring person indeed. So I read a lot of fiction and write some things and work out and run a few silly little side projects. They don’t shut the monkey up but they dim the noise for a bit so I can recharge, think better of myself, and also be a better CEO along the way. I don’t know what it’ll be for you but at least you know now that thing that’s distracting you, it’s the monkey. It’s part of the job. It’s good to be mindful about dealing with it.

Here’s a video of my talk from Fintech Devcon: why experienced founders should try to solve Really Hard problems, and my playbook for doing so.

There’s a Tai Chi master in Israel, called Nir Malkhi. He heads Israel’s biggest school for “internal arts”, a family of Chinese Martial Arts that broadly fit in the Kung Fu category. He has been teaching for decades. His students come to learn discipline, focus, a practice. They also learn how to defend themselves in hand to hand combat using Tai Chi. Tai Chi, that practice with such slow and graceful moves that Chinese retirees famously practice it in parks every morning.

Tai Chi works well for self defence, says Master Malkhi. He also demonstrates. Master Malkhi is very ill but before he fell ill, he wasn’t someone you wanted to up against. He was powerful, centred, fast. His Tai Chi demonstrations were convincing. You could see it.

One thing people often forgot is that Nir Malkhi grew up as a fighter. He served in the IDF’s equivalent of SEAL team 6. He was a hardened, well trained killer. Tai Chi had absolutely zero impact on his ability to fight. In fact, he would probably beat the average guy up using ballet or Lord of the Dance moves just the same. That’s not what he told his students, though. You can fight with Tai Chi, he said. That wasn’t the truth. He was at the end of a complex journey, enjoying the fruits of his labor, confusing where he was with the road he had taken. His students, devoid of his training and background, couldn’t use Tai Chi to save their lives – literally.

The worst type of career advice is given without the context that brought you to where you are.

It’s beyond failing to recognize luck, even though thinking luck had nothing to do with your success is a major symptom for losing your relevance. Most people who’ve reached a certain level of success or material possessions fail to realize that their enlightened advice is diametrically opposed to their lived experience. Bill Gates recasting himself as a philanthropist (latest revelations notwithstanding), Steve Jobs telling people to “stay foolish” while running his company like an intelligence operation, Naval telling people to Not Chase Status. Maybe it’s a symptom of lack of thinking about thinking. It’s surprising, because it’s bad advice offered in good faith by smart people, but there it is.

This is the moment that broke my heart in The Godfather part 2.

You see, people talk about Michael’s rise to power but they don’t often talk about how ill equipped he was to be the Don. Godfather 2 does more than just tell the story of two characters; it compares and contrasts Vito – the ruthless natural – with his son Michael, who was a good kid pushed into power before his time and, well, without the natural talent his father had. Yes, a talent for manipulating people, and violence, and making offers you cannot refuse, but a talent nonetheless. And like anyone pushed to excel in a role they were never made for, Michael overcompensated. We talk about the Baptism and we quote “just when I thought I was out” but here is Michael, almost broken, revealing just an inch of his tormented soul to his mother who has no frame of reference to understand why he’s so tortured, and what he’s about to do to himself, and his enemies, and his brother. He’s asking for some context and absolution and there’s none of either, not really, when you’re the Don.

Absolutely, yes, of course Michael is a monster, and a self made one, but the price he paid for power and influence cannot be overstated. He’s had to give up so much for something he didn’t even want to do, that he felt like he had to do, that eventually changed him in irreversible ways.

The other Al Pacino role that connects beautifully with this scene is when he contrasts with De Niro again, now in person, in Heat. Check out the diner scene, this bit that starts at 1:28. The subtext is text here so maybe just read it.

My life’s a disaster zone. I got a stepdaughter so fucked up because her real father’s this large-type asshole. I got a wife, we’re passing each other on the down-slope of a marriage – my third – because I spend all my time chasing guys like you around the block. That’s my life.

Vincent can’t stop, he won’t stop. What he does consumes him, is him, in such a deep way that nothing, not even genuine love, can fix. And he ends up – spoiler alert, I guess – leaving his stepdaughter at the hospital post suicide attempt and chasing his arch-nemesis and maybe the only guy who can understand him into an airport and shooting him dead, and then he holds his hand while he dies, right there on the tarmac.

These guys seem powerful. They are powerful, in a way, because they hurt themselves and everyone around them, and this is what old school masculine power is about, isn’t it, hurt and violence. At the same time, they’re completely powerless. Stuck in the image they have of themselves, and what they’re supposed to do, and what that requires of them. They’re at the top and they have nothing. They’re trapped.

I see trapped guys all around me. One day you look around and realize that through a lot of hard work and some luck you have reached the end of the scripted game, that grand plan you had for yourself since you were 18 years old. Like in Grand Theft Auto after the storylines are over, you’re left with only side quests and whatever you want to do, basically, in a huge sandbox universe. What do you do then? Many can’t break out of their own mind.

We’ve settled on a single narrative in tech that success is incompatible with happiness. There’s one scorecard, money, and as long as you’re on the leaderboard you’re all set, life is good, you have it all figured out, and nothing else matters. I get it, it’s hard to evaluate something less tangible like happiness, or ethics, or just being able to have a full night’s sleep, but looking at the folks we put on a pedestal, I see achievement, for sure, but I also see a bunch of trapped unhappy guys. The SPAC king posting thirst traps. The insanely successful innovator who can’t sleep without Ambien. The recluse king in his remote village, trying to remake reality so it makes any type of sense to him. Trapped, trapped, trapped. Trapped in a perception of who they need to be, of what their value is to the world, in how they get their sense of meaning, because money and virtual internet points are stuff you can always have more of. Powerful, influential people, much more than me or you. Trapped nonetheless.

You don’t need to have tragically ended your life in a fiery hell, surrounded by paid-for sycophants, for evidence you’ve been trapped. For many of us it’s much more mundane: another promotion, another business trip, another notch on the belt, this or that logo on our business card. Feeling like you’re worthless without your achievements and that the intensity that got you here should carry you on for the rest of your life. Like Walter White, you Just Need More. It would be tragic if we let ourselves and our generation go on feeling like money and score keeping are all that matters, and happiness isn’t only unattainable, it’s incompatible with success. In reality, happiness starts when you realize you have enough. Then you start to see the lines of the cage you’ve built and can consider whether, and on what terms, you want out.

Nothing matters. You may believe your soul is eternal or that karma determines your future lives. You may not believe any of that. Regardless, our trivial pursuits mean nothing in the grand scheme of things. Our petty squabbles, our victories and defeats, our joys and sorrows have no innate meaning. We are specks of dust on a planet in a universe that is almost endlessly big.

We’re all going to die. Maybe you’re that one guy on Twitter who thinks he doesn’t age but, news flash, he’s going to die and so are you, and so am I. Even if we find a way to upload our consciousness into the cloud, this physical body is withering away. Half my life has passed, and I am weaker at 40 than I was at 20. We’re all dying by the second.

Nothing matters and we’re all going to die, yet we still wake up in the morning to greet another day. We drink our coffee and we turn on the computer and we take the kids to school. Something’s pulling us forward. Something’s nagging at us to live. What is it? Maybe it’s living for living’s sake.

Some things matter and I’m not dead yet. I catch my wife looking at me and there’s love in her eyes. She touches my shoulder as she passes by while I cook dinner. My face in the mirror is like the one I see in our wedding photos but older. My son is crying his emotions and his tears are big and round and shiny like fleeting gemstones. He looks so much like me when I was his age. My aging father, drunk off two glasses of wine, is telling silly jokes at an expanded family dinner, and my brother and I roll our eyes. We fight and we argue, and, in the end, we sit down to eat together.

Some things matter, profoundly, because I say they do, and they matter for as long as I am around on this earth. It’s not a lot but it’s how I run my life.

One surprising thing that I learned about martial arts is that at the highest levels, it is about conservation of energy and well timed exertion more than giving it all you have and winning with a single motion. As a white belt in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu you know maybe one choke, and your best hope to make it through a sparring round (other than tapping or gassing out) is to aggressively manoeuvre yourself into a position, close the submission to the best of your ability, and hope the other guy taps out before you black out. A black belt will let the other guy roll into their position before springing one of a few submissions. There’s exertion when they close the trap and, sure, they’re in much better shape than you — but what separates the great ones from the best isn’t raw power.

I think about this sometimes at work. Organizations quickly reach a size that defies the efforts of any individual or small group to make rapid directional changes overnight. It’s possible, but it requires an exertion of energy that may kill you, and you only get to do it once or twice. Black belts in business will roll with the team, making adjustments as they go, and have multiple positions where they could exert energy, quickly, to get something done by either discouraging a wrong direction or (more often) over-funding and enthusiastically encouraging the right one. The flexibility to accept organizational dynamics and let them play out to align a team with strategic goals is key to getting stuff done and, well, not blacking out mid-quarter. This is where the often incorrectly-applied word, “strategy”, meets day to day execution.

Content rules. Conference panels are a fixture in the life of a CEO, whether in virtual or in-person. Podcasts are more popular than ever. How do you keep getting invited to those and keep people in the room and not out in the proverbial (or literal) corridor? These are my tips.

Prepare. Maybe 1% of us can wing it and it’s safer to assume it’s not you. I’ve been able to rock panels with high powered CEOs because they didn’t bother to read the list of questions. Prepare, find your angle for each question and for follow up questions, propose questions that serve you if there aren’t any or the moderator invites you to.

Entertain. Many people think panels are an opportunity to pontificate. They are not: the crowd is there to be informed and entertained. Reframe a common thought, offer a framework, or just point a topic not many discuss and explain how it’s relevant to your audience. Serve your crowd’s expectations, cut down on monologues, and try to be least interesting. If you get them to engage, they will remember you.

Repeat. You’re not a standup comic giving the same routine twice a night for months. You don’t need 100% fresh material every time. Repetition leads to mastery and gets the message across. You may be tired of it but your crowd isn’t (unless, see above, you’re a boring lecturer). Don’t try to reinvent your messaging every time — repeat your best ideas in the same way.

Here’s to a less boring 2021. I’m still going to listen to all of you at 1.5X speed and I suggest you do the same with me.

Growth is cool, but also exhausting. The absolute number of fires grows with time as does complexity. I’ve made it a habit to ask my execs not only about business performance but also how they’re taking care of their mental wellbeing. You can only push >100% for a time but burnout is real and is often a bigger problem than underperformance due to incompetence. If you’re a CEO or C-level exec I strongly recommend considering the 50% rule and strong support networks (including coaching) but the risk of burnout is still big. How do you hang on to the rocket ship? I give these three pieces of advice.

Give up the martyr complex. Director+ leaders often forget that they’re not player-coaches anymore and let themselves dive into managing tactical day to day issue. While you can and should be part of your team’s bench and operational buffer as well as an escalation path, those occurrences must be few and far between.

Hire a deep bench. As Jason Lemkin says – if you reach the end of the week and you’re exhausted, you’re missing at least one VP-level hire. Great leaders are great because they build great teams and delegate, not because they do a lot with little, especially in high growth environments.

Renegotiate operating mechanism. Shit will hit the fan and you will be pulled into situations you didn’t create and will have to apologize for. Giving up direct impact to increase your span of control is part of the job. What you should do is negotiate operating mechanisms – OKRs, frequency of meetings, dashboards and what they track – to keep yourself aware of the state of the business. It’s also ok to obsess over these things as long as that obsession doesn’t translate into micromanaging two levels down because you didn’t like the daily change in a KPI.

By now you probably know, managing in high growth is unintuitive. Learning from others, then giving yourself the space to learn and reflect, are critical for your and your team’s success.