Grow Stuff and Work with People that Don't Suck

Life is too short!

A few years back I was "liberated" from a job in an unexpected manner, which can be disconcerting to anyone who is trying to provide for their family. After the fear wore off and I realized that this was really an opportunity, the following four months after losing my job was the most eye-opening and liberating time I've had. 

Here’s why…

Reason 1: I had 6 months of expenses in the bank. (If you don't have that, start saving. It's the best insurance policy you can have. It's more important than your 401(k) and saving for college; do that after you have a cushion.)

Reason 2: It gave me time to really reflect on what I wanted to do. Do the same thing in the same industry? Do something different that capitalized on my skills but in a different industry? Go dig wells in Africa?

I set out to have as many conversations as I could with as many different people as I could — two coffee appointments a day for four months gives you some good data points. None of them was a job interview. I did that, too, but the recruiting and resume thing was soul-sucking. 

What I discovered was that lots of people do interesting things, but the biggest takeaway in trying to articulate what I really wanted to do to this diverse group of coffee dates was really simple: I wanted to grow stuff and work with people who don't suck.

Growing a business means adding value in some tangible way, and I know that I always want to be on the growth side of a business. If you can add value or revenue or new clients or systems that enable growth, you’ll always have a job.

People are funny. In meetings, I'd articulate my mission, and I'd get two reactions: silent stoned-faced stares or huge smiles with comments like, "Hey, we have a motto like that, it's called 'no knuckle-heads.'"I learned to steer away from the silent stone-faced types and gravitated toward those that weren't necessarily offended by the word "suck" and could get behind the broader meaning. 

I really value the quality of the people I work with. I want to work with people that are willing to work as hard as I do but also have fun doing it. I didn't want to work with people that play politics, that spend more time focused on keeping their job than on doing their job.

At the end of the day, who you work with matters, and you get to choose how you show up and who you want to work with (critics welcome).

I believe if you personally focus on adding value to any organization you’re in, you’ll give yourself the option to — you guessed it — grow stuff and work with people who don't suck.