Next Step Goal
This section provides a framework for what an ideal position would look like.
1ļøā£ Alignments
šÆĀ Vision Alignment
The whole team is rowing towards a shared vision of a better world. That vision is our motivational juice, not the money.
High Alignment Visions
- Optical object recognition and high-speed robotics for recycling processes.
- Mobile payment platform for the unbanked in rural Africa.
- Circle economy packaging and logistics.
- Shipping materials grown from mushrooms or hemp.
- AI therapy.
- Psychedelic-assisted therapy.
- Decentralization of nearly any flavor.
- Synthetic media.
- At-scale sharing economy.
- Gamification for corporate decarbonizing efforts.
Low Alignment Visions
- Commodities: Goods or services which are nearly identical to competitors, and a massive amount of effort is spent to gain market share without any meaningful reduction in harm.
šš¼Ā Cultural Alignment
A hard-hitting, forward-charging, quick-thinking, and flowing team that embraces the challenge and wants to see growth happen.
Break the CEO Isolation: As a leader in the business, I am often the guy the buck stops with. I donāt have peers and Iām expected to have all the answers, hold it all together and take responsibility for the losses. Iād like to get back to being the ādumb guyā in the room, being surrounded by equal peers, building something together.
āļøĀ Logistical Alignment
Details such as OKRs, compensation, working location, and the rest of the fine print support the life I'm intentionally designing for myself without causing problems at the organization.
Industry: If Iām connected to the meaning of work Iām industry agnostic.
Location: Metro Detroit is home for now. If there is alignment and trust Iād be willing to consider relocation, and recent events by Google and Twitter have raised that bar.
Flex Work: 50% in the corporate office, 50% in the remote office. If I'm going to be in the corporate office, I expect it to be for engaging with people in meaningful ways that are best done in person. Productivity increases when I do Deep Work, which is best done in an environment I totally control. While I'm done working from my home office for a week straight without seeing another human, I should also be able to work from the mountains of Peru for a few weeks at a time as long as I'm hitting my goals and have a good Wi-Fi connection.
Compensation: Iāve held the six figure base salary + profit sharing + commissions + generous comp package which we agreed to after 12 rounds of negotiating. Iām sure this will be a point of conversation.
Travel: I enjoy and am willing to travel 50% of the time when there is a valid reason to engage with humans in a meaningful way. Iām not interested in spending a day in transit to have a meeting which could have been held via Zoom.
2ļøā£Ā Alignment Chart
Area | Indication | Contraindication |
Mission | We are here to decrease human suffering and increase human flourishing in a measurable and direct way for our target population. When we do our work, the world heals, lives improve, and a person fears less, loves more, and enjoys a bit more peace. | Speculative derivatives trading generates cash without creating value. It helps make old white guys richer, and they'll give us a cut of the profits. We are a commodity and do nearly the identical thing that 30 other businesses do, except we just look a little different. We exploit people's egos to extract cash from them in exchange for a passing dopamine hit. |
Extrinsic Motivation | Collective vision as a team that we all row towards a better world which we're bringing about. Our life efforts aren't here for the collection of dollars, they're here for the betterment of others. | I'm just here for the paycheck. I'm a clock puncher. If I'm not invested in seeing the business win because it doesn't matter to me, I'm just living for the weekend. |
Measurable Change | The work I do brings about lasting, positive change in the world I can see. | Busy work of travel expense reports that won't be analyzed and will be filed into some folder never to be seen again. Plans, strategies, code, ideas, and documentation that are used for a few months and then discarded, not yielding much change in the world. |
Leadership | I want to follow a leader whom I respect and want to emulate. | Another incompetent boss who is there because of their seniority or nepotism, and not because of their skill set. I tolerate them while actively avoiding picking up any bad habits from them. |
Participation | A business still in its evolutionary growth process. The system hasn't solidified into rigidity and we're co-creating the growth. | A "yes man" who doesn't disrupt and follows the team without questioning. Just do your job and stop asking questions, my little worker bee drone.
That's the way we've always done it. Stay in your lane, stop innovating, and do your work. |
Disruption | Innovation, improvement, and refinement are celebrated and rewarded, even when they are disruptive, contradict the common narrative, and challenge leadership. | A cog in the system who makes the machine run, wearing pleated khakis, sits in a cubicle and chats about football during water cooler breaks. |
Movement | High-speed, high-challenge, high-reward, moving, dynamic, and growing system. | A stable rigid system which is seen as perfect and just needs to be implemented by workers. |
Human Flourishing | I win when you win. A sense of mutual coaching and helping each other become more effective professionals. When I'm in a healthy, balanced place, I add the most value. | Extractionary mindset of getting the most out of people who we expect to compartmentalize their lives in airtight boxes and just get the work done. |
Team Vibe | Quick and Diverse: Teams are built to capitalize on strengths and minimize weaknesses based on natural alignments. | Finance Bro/Sales Jockey with a high and tight haircut that tells stories about the beer pong championship they won during their frat induction.
Pleated Khaki Pants/Old White Guys: We all golf together on the weekends before we head back to our McMansions and eat steaks our trophy wives cooked while the kids practice lacrosse on the front lawn the landscapers fertilized yesterday. |
Working smart | Asynchronis communication, deep work, strong digital tech stack with clear prioritization and communication. Deliverables are outcome-based, not based on working 40 hours a week. | Endless emails, regularly scheduled meetings without agendas, and constant interruptions that prevent flow state. |
Flexible Working Conditions | Get your work done really well. Help us make meaningful progress towards our shared vision. Pour into your team. As long as you're achieving this, weāre open to location and time freedom.
Hereās the list/goals. Get it done. We donāt care where or when. | We expect you to have your butt in that chair from 9am to 5pm, Monday through Friday, regardless, because that's just how we do it.
I'm allergic to cubicles, fluorescent lights, Windows desktop computers, pale blue dress shirts, water coolers, and parking structures.
We'll monitor if your mouse is moving because we're paying for your time, not your mental work. |
Spiritual Pathways/Sellout | I'm a spiritual being living a physical existence to evolve myself and others. One way I do this is through my work, but that's only 20% of my life focus.
I follow my deep inner knowledge and my spiritual path primarily. My job either supports this process or is in line with it. The job is not my method of self-actualization. | The person who drank the Kool-Aid and conflates their career as their means to self-actualization, logging 70 hours a week and having no life apart from work.
I don't really enjoy my work, but it pays well. I'm busy and making good money, but I've lost sight of personal development and spiritual evolution. I feel like a corporate sell-out, taking the money and benefits for meaningless work but good compensation. It's like I have golden handcuffs. |
3ļøā£Ā Spencer on Marketing
A decade in digital marketing has led me to become pretty damn good at it. However, for the most part, I'm done with marketing.
I've spent a decade exploiting fear, manipulating emotions, building egos, and grabbing attention. That sentence feels like it should be said in a confessional, and I'm now exiting that phase of my career. I'm not interested in being a jet-setting ad executive building the next Super Bowl commercial to sell poisonous food, fast fashion, or automotive insurance to the masses.
That being said, I am turning my talents to good and finding ways to tell stories to people who are ready to hear them so that they can do something that betters their lives.
Banging pots and pans, trying to distract and get attention through ego manipulations and emotional exploitation to allow economic extraction, is no longer on the table.
If you cringe as you read this, then we're not a fit. If you want to read it again as you're thinking "Yes, that's it!" then we should talk.
4ļøā£Ā Life Fit
5 Year Alignment
As I exit my 20s and enter my 30s, I'm not focused on making a lot of money. Rather, I'm focused on adventure and making an impact on the process of global awakening with teams that are moving the needle. I see myself moving around the world, working with my small staff as we help several clients grow and change in the world while making good money.
I'm perfectly happy driving my 2013 Toyota Yaris with manual windows and a cracked windshield while wearing thrifted clothes and eating lentils and vegetables from the farmers' market and flying Spirit Airlines with a carry-on backpack. I don't need or even desire luxury goods or experiences.
I'm not perfectly happy with my life's efforts helping rich white guys get richer, emotionally manipulating people, and growing businesses that have no or possibly even negative impacts on global suffering. Nor am I happy worrying about whether I have enough money to buy a new furnace, spending countless hours looking for boys to date, and not going on traveling adventures or doing hot yoga to save money. I feel stuck in a lower orbit with the people I'm with and want to ascend into the higher orbit of people who are alive and engaged in making a difference.
End Game Level 1:
By the time I'm 50, maybe sooner, I will be part of a heavy-hitting consulting firm that is focused on high-impact business, solving real problems for real humans, and politely declining inquiries from high-paying yet low-impact clients. We're a mix of turnaround teams buying out struggling ventures, adding them to our portfolio, and relaunching them. We add jet fuel to ventures that are already thriving but could use some fine-tuning and an internal accelerator to launch ideas internally.
Because we're doing this at scale, our in-house/contracted/optimized tech stack/remote teams can handle the business activities of several assets at the same time. Financial management has some level of centralization, as does legal, marketing, and parts of operations.
End Game Level 2:
I keep a spreadsheet of business ideas/models I like to see built when I have the capital and a team to build them. The astute ask why Iām not building them now? As a founder I know how hard it is to launch a business and make it profitable. As a leader I know the vision must compel you at the soul level to power you through the launch and all of the pitfalls. When I run my finger down the list, none of them zap me with enough energetic voltage, and I know this isnāt the time.
When Iāve got the capital to self-fund and not report to short term profit lenders/investors and a team to help me hold space and spin the plates, Iād like to build a private accelerator. As 80% of these business arenāt paradigm shifting startups to disrupt global markets but rather local business built around a community, they are also best served when Iāve found a geographical area I can to call home for a decade.
Retirement and Death
I never plan to retire to a villa on the Mediterranean coast to focus on my fictional passion of collecting exotic shellfish and drooling at the pool boys. Rather, I expect I'll move into Level 1 in my 50s, hit Level 2 in my 60s, spend my 70s mentoring, and die with my faculties and dignity fully intact in a ceremony with the people I love near me. After wrapping up my knowledge into some sort of documentation, I'll hand it off to the public domain for whoever is interested.
Legacy
No buildings will have my name on them. There are no scholarships, endowments, or trusts with my name baked into the branding. My name won't make it into any history books or business seminars, and nothing I write will be a New York Times best seller. There's a standard Wikipedia page that won't get updates after I die. But 10 million people have a life that is just a little bit better because I was around. I followed my personal calling and helped all of the people who were in my path. The world is left just a little bit better than when I got here, and no one knows that it's me.