I got an email the other day from a friend.
I thought I would share it with you.
Let me give you the context of why I thought it worthwhile.
As I have been fighting the demons of this dark period over the past several months, I’ve been attempting not only to deal with the day to day issues which emerge, but also to construct…or reconstruct, as it were…some understanding of what it will take to create order out of chaos.
I found personal consolation…as well as marital consolation for Janet…in telling Janet that we have to look at today from some point in the future. We have to see what we are going through not from today’s lens, but from a lens looking back from some time one, two or three years from now.
That’s not just wishful thinking, mind you. I truly believe that. And I truly believe (historically and experientially) that this moment is simply a freeze-framed moment in time. After all, history is written looking backwards; only newspapers are written in real time.
And as I personally look back in my life, I sometimes do my best to reconstruct what I must have been feeling at the time I experienced whatever that particularly difficult time was. And yet, today it often looks far different.
Let me discuss it through.
When we created Dynetech in 2000, we had no proof of concept, an untested business model, no revenue, and a cash flow burn of $700K in 1999 and $1.2 million in 2001. I lived off of credit cards, trading income, a little lawyering, a little speaking, and relatively small investments from friends and family–with a wife and two kids. We only actually made money, for the first time, in 2002.
It wasn’t a totally black period, but it was certainly dark. And it was personally bleak for the two of us.
When Janet told me she was surprising me by bringing me to a Disney restaurant in September of 2001 for my birthday, I told her how distracted I was because we were struggling to make payroll that day. As I saw the tears well up in her eyes, I instantly regretted what I had said and reassured her that we would figure it out and it would be OK. Don’t worry: it would be OK. We went and I spent the rest of the evening salvaging her moment and rebuilding our intimacy.
We kept dealing with the issues of the moment for the balance of the year and into the next; working with vendors we owed money to; creating new products and services; rethinking and tweaking our business model: on and on, throughout 2002. Eventually, the clouds parted, the days brightened and we came out for our brief respite in the sun.
Between 2000 and 2007, we built a company that had gone from losing a consolidated $1.9 million on neglible revenue to grossing $256 million and $28 million in annual profit by the end of 2007.
And we topped out employing just shy of 600 people–close to 1,000 household members were part of our family universe. Some 15 associates had married each other. Twice that number had married others. 20 newborns joined our ranks. And 35 or so had reported buying their first homes or an additional investment property at our Annual Training Day.
Unfortunately, the latter part of 2007 and all of 2008 and 2009 were not nearly so kind. And I’ll address that in some other post.
But here’s the point I want to make right now.
My friend, Steve Ruttenberg from Seattle, sent me an email over the Christmas holidays which I want to share with you. He said, in the midst of a fully developed message, “Larry, reserve all judgment of the present until it becomes the past.” He then went on to say that the frame within which we see life must be that of living in the now, but by seeing it from a detached point in the future.
That frame blew me away.
I understood that each day I live through is a moment in time…and I have to live through it. But what Steve’s message gave me was the opportunity to recognize that the only way to gain perspective over what I am doing today is to conceptualize it from a perth several years away. That is, after all, where “perspective” (perthspective?) comes from.
That frame doesn’t make the job I have to do today any less difficult or problematic, but it definitely makes the process less painful and the outcomes more hopeful.
And most of all, it’s germinative. It’s procreative. It spawns a picture of the way it will look in the future, so that, from that spot…that perth, I can look back at where I am today and connect the dots. “Here’s where I’m going to land; here’s where I am: hence (looking backwards), here’s what I need to do to bridge the gap.”
I know that I will have to wake up tomorrow and face whatever the day brings. Through some of it, I’ll be shadow-boxing; and through other parts, I’ll be securing my game face: regardless, the cycle will continue to unfold and the outcomes will continue to be tallied.
But Steve, it helps me to know that you took the time to remind me to reserve judgment until the present has become the past.
Thank you for sharing…and for caring!