When I was forty-two, following many months of self-examination, I left a senior role with a financial institution to lead a start-up investment firm. Without exaggerating, I invested all my available cash, together with the investments of a number of colleagues in this new firm. I also arranged a very significant capital injection from an angel investor.
A few months in, it became clear to me—as it often does to others in similar situations—that our expenses were marching along at plan, but our revenues were not. I needed to find a way, with virtually no additional cost, to build our profile. I approached a local radio station and negotiated a deal which would give me three minutes of personal airtime—Saturdays at noon—to discuss the markets. Within three months, thanks to the assistance of some key people, this morphed into a three-hour, Sunday evening, nationally syndicated call-in show. The show lasted for many years, and put our company on the map. Astonishingly, several years after the show had gone off the air, I found myself at the ticket counter at an airport, where I asked the agent to see if I could change a flight. Without looking at my name on the ticket, she exclaimed, “You’re the voice on the radio!”
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Here’s the point. When we are building a business, and we have put our name, and assets, behind it, there is only one acceptable outcome.
And this means that we are all in .
Today, when interviewing people seeking to work with me, I ask questions to gauge whether they are ready to truly commit.
To be clear, I’m not asking them to throw themselves in the way I, and others, did; but I do want to get a sense of the depth of their passion—because our clients will sense it, for better or worse—and it needs to be for better.